Skich, a Tinder-like game recommendation app where users swipe and discover mobile games based on their interests, rolled out a new feature that allows users to launch, collect, sort and delete games on their devices without leaving the app.
Dubbed “Game Launcher,” the new feature collects games that users have downloaded on their phone and organizes them based on title, playtime, most recently played and when it was installed. This could be helpful for players who constantly install games and want to sort through the clutter in one place versus tirelessly scrolling on their home screen.
There’s also a “Show Playtime” capability that tells users how many hours they’ve played, so they can see which ones they play the most and choose to delete the games they play the least. Plus, users can launch games through Skich so they don’t have to exit the app to play.
Skich automatically adds games to Game Launcher if they’re in the database. One drawback is that only 15,000 games are available on Skich. If games are missing from Skich’s database, users have to manually input them. For context, there are an estimated 490,000 mobile games available in the Google Play Store and over 1 million games in the Apple App Store.
The app is “actively replenishing this database every day,” Skich founder and CEO Sergey Budkovski told TechCrunch.
Game Launcher is currently only available on Android devices. (Apple has rules about apps that could compete with its own App Store, as Skich might.)
In recent months, Skich has added new features like the ability to create game playlists or “Gamelists” and profiles for game developers. Skich also revamped its app last year with a new design, a new game selection algorithm and a section for pre-releases.
The game playlists are a nice addition because they give users recommendations from like-minded players, which may be refreshing to those who only discover new games through editor picks on the app store.
Skich hopes that adding the new game developer profiles will give them more brand awareness.
“We know that the biggest problem for game developers right now is finding their audience,” Budkovski said. Because the mobile gaming market is so saturated, it’s hard for independent developers to make their mark.
The company found that a lot of Skich users download more games from a game developer when they are going through their profile, similar to when someone discovers a new song and searches the artist’s discography.
Additionally, Skich plans to add a new capability to its Friends tab, which currently lets players follow their friends and other gamers. Users can see what games their friends added to their wishlist, played list, created a custom gamelist, and who left a review for a game.
By the end of 2023, Skich will launch a real-time activity feature that shows which friends have started playing the game or are in the middle of playing, Budkovski told us.
Skich’s new app brings social discovery to mobile game recommendations
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