Android Omnibus Testers needed!

We’re hard at work on an “omnibus app” for Android, including all of our games in a single app. It works just like our omnibus app for iOS.

We’re looking for beta testers to help us. Please email me, jason AT choiceofgames for access. DO NOT SEND ME A MESSAGE THROUGH THE FORUM MAIL SYSTEM. When you send your EMAIL, include:

  • Your forum-name
  • Your real name
  • Your Google email address (the email address you use for the Google Play Store on your phone)
  • The brand and model of your Android device (you can find this in your phone’s Settings app, “About phone” or “About device”)
  • Be sure to mention that you want to test the Android omnibus.

Note that the omnibus will eventually be available on the Amazon Appstore for Android for Kindle Fire devices, and we will need beta testers for that at some point, but right now we’re focusing our testing on the Google Play Store.

We’re not starting the beta tonight or tomorrow, but probably later this week or the weekend. We’ll also be grouping people for admittance. Therefore, once you submit yourself, please understand that it may be a week or two before you receive the beta invite.

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Will this apply to games purchased from Steam?

That’s a good question; I’ve added it to our omnibus FAQ, linked in Jason’s post. To save you a click:

If I purchase a game on Steam, can I play it in the omnibus?

No. We don’t have a reliable way of allowing you to sign in to Steam in our mobile apps. You can instead play Steam-purchased games on our website at choiceofgames.com.

To restore Steam games on our website, click “restore purchases” and choose the option to “Restore purchases from Steam.” Note that this option is only available on the web, not in our apps.

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Will Omnibus be the only way to play on Android from now on, or will separate apps still be released?

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We’ll continue to release separate apps for Android for COG and HG.

Heart’s Choice will only be available in the Heart’s Choice omnibus.

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Would definitely be nice to get a single at least app containing the collection of apps I’ve purchased a good portion of the apps through Google Play, but it’s sometimes when searching for one to play it can be quite a few apps to go through.

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I don’t like omnibus and by principle don’t trust in them so i will resorting to the web for heart choice. Still I suppose for people that like trust in 3d party apps their data could be a good addition.

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Out of curiosity, why do this for Android? IIRC it was originally done for iOS because it was required by Apple. Has Google started asking for such things as well?

No, nobody’s forcing us to do this. Some people prefer it, so we’re doing it.

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@Pheriannath The google play store regularly screens out a lot of games unless you search in exactly the right way. With the growing library of HG/COG a lot of the games are going to end up missed. It’s not even just older or less well selling games that are a a few years old that can go missing. I’ve seen older games with relatively low downloads on the suggestion list, while ones released less than a year ago with higher downloads aren’t there. Who knows what google is doing with their analytics for excluding gamebooks by publisher search, your guess is as good as mine. (Although it’s obvious why they’re trying to sneak unrelated high earning microtransaction games in there if you general search by “Hosted games” or “Choice of games” :roll_eyes:) I noticed when the apple omnibus was rolled out, my older games suddenly became more visible, so I’m sure other games are getting buried as well on the appstore because there are so many and it’s hard to find them all. At least android isn’t forcing the omnibus on anyone like apple so people can choose what they like best :slight_smile: .

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Ah, I understand. Thanks @dfabulich and @Jacic!

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Awesome idea! Since it’s not replacing standalone releases, an omnibus just provides another avenue for people to find older games. There’s literally no downside for authors or readers that I can see.

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I agree. Always Is a choice is good thing. Maybe do some sales or promoting games there could bring more visibility.

Because for instance I have like most of catalogue Google still recommend me those filled with microtransations games from the competence… Instead you know CHOICE OF GAMES games. :angry: Each time I read my forced weeding and all machist titles i get so angry. Google should learning to give visibility

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I’m glad there will still be standalone games since they generally sell much better and are easier to promote, but there are concerns here:

The main concern is that dividing sales like that will stop new games from trending on the Google Play store because many of the week one sales are from already existing fans who are more likely to use the omnibus. This will keep games from trending on GPS and result in lower week one sales. For example, Fool! was trending at #1 for a surprising amount of time and got a lot of attention as a result. A friend of mine who doesn’t follow CoG releases even saw it and downloaded it because it was trending. People actually look at that stuff.

Maybe if new releases were only released on the omnibus a week or two later? This could be viable since apparently there will be a mechanism in place to transfer purchases to the omnibus after…

The other thing is that since CoG’s more hardcore fans are the ones most likely to use the omnibus, that will also severely impact reviews on the Play store, which will, in turn, tank the standalone games on Google’s algorithm since the number of week-one reviews will be cut in half or even worse. I think these are VERY important things to consider before rolling out new games on the omnibus.

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I’m not saying I’ve got much time to beta test, but here are my observations, having tested all three omnibus apps (Choice of Games, Hosted Games and Heart’s Choice).

Overall, I’ve enjoyed myself. Yet, there is also room for development until we can agree that they are on par with the website. For example…well, here are the suggestions I’d submit from my paid experiences:
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LAUNCH LAST PLAYED GAME AT APP START (if app was closed while a game was open)

When we used individual apps for each game, the app’s icon looked more inviting that the generic store logo. Though that’s not such a big problem, what could be improved in the omnibus app, at least, is an option to automatically bring player back to the last game they played, so that they won’t have to fetch it and launch it again and again and again. Without that, the app look a bit like a downgrade from what we had before…

JUSTIFIED TEXT

An option to justify the text. This is a basic thing for any professional made reading apps! I’ve been mentioning that for ages… it takes only 1 HTML or 1 CSS tag whichever you prefer, for goodness’— …however… I’ll be patient and take whatever is available for now. (Not much choice.) I know that sounds like a whim, but, seriously, aesthetics do make a difference regarding paid content!

FULLSCREEN

Fullscreen mode that’d trigger when we tap the top right corner of the screen. The titlebar / toolbar / grey thing above the text, plus to the android system navigation buttons, plus the android system menubar…both cover a ridiculously huge amount of screen for such small reading devices. How can we read comfortably? After all, we have to pay to make the lower corner ad banner disappear. So, one could expect the worth of available screen for the text would be understood by the technical team and that they would go for a maximum use of it in the paid version.

ACHIEVEMENTS

One would have thought that make achievements more important would have been one of the main goals of an omnibus app. An achievement completion ratio on each game profile, and of course, having Google Play Games handle them completely, or at least, synchronize them with it.

TAGS

A tags for non human main characters, and
a tags for when non human avatars/protagonists can be played. (Especially: robots, elves, extraterrestrials, vampires, werewolves.)
Tags such as possibly gender-free, possibly polyamory, possible asexual romances, featuring on the store would boost you sales as far as I am concerned. These gameplay features matters a lot to many players here.

PURCHASES

Restoration of purchases should rely on your website first, in priority, to check purchases, before it queries the Google PlayStore for them.
Why? Besides of matter of showing you oldest customer you still care?
Well because as they are right now, your omnibus apps can be fully used from any android based device, without the need of the any mobile store (for example, they could work on VR headsets, Raspberry Pi gadgets, Arduino, Alexa, Google Home, though sideload… but paid games that has been purchased on the website can’t unlock if there is no Google PlayStore and Google Services, etc. because the app checks on the PlayStore first, instead of checking with your website, as it should.

This is all for the serious features worthy of development. Below this figure more personal wishes.
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EBOOK PORTS FOR KINDLE (and NOOK?) : Is there any chance that this could happen in the distant future?

ADDITIONAL COLOR OPTIONS : I’d also ask for more color options for background color, like beige, blue-grey and forest green.

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