That includes Battle Transformers, DC Comics villains and more.
Android gamers: get your phones and Daydream View headsets ready. Google offered a sneak peak of a handful of upcoming Android games at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco on Monday, as the company seeks to overhaul the Google Play store in a bid to help gamers more easily find quality titles.
Although some of the new games are designed for virtual reality, arguably the biggest title—Transformers: Forged to Fight—is not. The game, first announced last year, is an action-fighting extravaganza that features the familiar robots from the Transformers franchise, including Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Developers from Kabam Studios demoed the title at GDC, showing off the game’s custom-built rendering platform that is designed to harness the processing power of the Google Pixel. Transformers: Forged to Fight will be released on April 5, and you can pre-register on the Google Play store today.
Google also announced that two new VR titles will be hitting the Play Store soon. Virtual Rabbids is an interactive game that isn’t much more complicated than its title suggests: you communicate and interact with the Rabbids using the Daydream controller, and the aliens react accordingly, often quite humorously.
During a Demo at GDC, the Rabbids stole body parts—limbs, organs, and more—from the player’s virtual body, and he had to nod his head when Rabbids asked if he wanted them back. This game is clearly intended to show off the capabilities of the Daydream headset and controller.
The second VR title is Beartopia, a cooperative multiplayer game in which players attempt to build a village. Rounding out the launch are two more non-VR games: Injustice 2 from Warner Bros offers a chance to battle with DC comics heroes and villains, and Epic Games’ Battlebreakers is a fantasy sci-fi adventure that resembles a cross between a cartoon you might watch on Saturday morning and a familiar RPG.
To help these and other high-quality titles cut through the noise of mediocre Android games, Google said it will revamp how it displays games for sale on the Play store. No longer will the most-downloaded games rank the highest. Instead, titles with head-turning icons that attract lots of downloads but that users quickly uninstall will get less promotion in the store.
Google is also adding to the Play store new game categories, which editors will curate with a description and a handful of featured titles. Some developers will also be able to include inline videos in their Play store pages to give prospective buyers a glimpse of the action, as well as offer limited-time discounts.