Heyzap Expands Its Mobile Gaming Platform With Leaderboards, Where You Can Challenge Other Players

Heyzap continues to build out its social platform with the addition of player leaderboards that developers can add to their mobile games.

Other companies have released their own leaderboard options, most notably OpenFeint — except that the OpenFeint service is closing down on December 14, following its acquisition by GREE in April of last year. So there’s a bit of a vacuum. Plus, co-founder Jude Gomila said Heyzap’s version is more focused on friends’ scores and more engagement.

If you’ve signed up for Heyzap and are playing one of the leaderboard-enabled games, anytime you achieve a “personal best” score, the leaderboard will pop up showing how you compare with your friends. And you can act on the rankings by challenging others. The challenged user will get a notification, then you can each try to top each other as you play again and again. (Creating deeper engagement with friends seems to be a big focus in Heyzap’s recent additions; it also launched a Play With Friends feature last month.)

Leaderboards for both iOS and Android are now included in the Heyzap SDK, and Gomila said the integration only takes about an hour. It’s already live with 50 Android games, including GnarBike, Jewel Cut, and Trivia Burst. (It has also been integrated into some iOS games, but they’re still going through the Apple approval process.)