Why Supercell couldn’t save Squad Busters and Google's AI game maker | Week in Mobile Games podcast

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Hello and welcome back to Pocket Gamer.biz Podcast the week in mobile games. Now, if you're looking at your screen and you're thinking that Craig looks a little bit different this week, don't worry, nothing's wrong with your screen. Craig is in fact away on holiday in Canada, I believe. Um so I'm stepping in as host this week. I'm Maryam, editorial director of events here at Pocket Gamer.biz. I'm sure you've seen me sort of somewhere before. Um whether it be on our videos or on our site and whatnot. Um and yeah, I'm really excited to be hosting our podcast today. It's just me and Aaron who who's joining me today. So, features and data editor Aaron Astle. How are you doing? What have you been up to?
Uh yeah, not too bad. Um yeah, it's been a few weeks since I've made a podcast appearance. Um I had a kind of flu-y thing a few weeks ago, which was not very nice. So, I'm basically back to normal now. Um Yeah, I've been quite busy actually. I went to Madame Tussauds the other week,

which was quite um good fun. They
Oh, nice.
a bit like a a big child because I was less interested like they have a like sports people section, which was like not interested. I was straight through onto the next bit. And they had like royals. It's like you know, carry on. And then they had like the Star Wars section. It's like, okay, I need to get some photos here. Um like posing with like Anakin or in the middle of one of the Phantom Menace like three, you know, battle like with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon and stuff. Um and then they had like some Marvel characters. So, I kind of posed with like the Hulk grabbing me and
Oh, nice.
So, yeah, it was quite That was quite good fun. Yeah, I did I did feel like quite a a child that excited me a lot more than the like real people uh the real models.
Oh, that's awesome. I haven't been to Madame Tussauds. Is that one the one on Baker Street?

Yes.
Like off Baker Street. Yeah, I haven't been there in God, years and years. And I know they always add sort of like new wax figures, I guess you call them. So I'm wondering who'd be like new in their lineup. Because I think they do update it like every so often. But I'd be with you. I'd like run straight past like the royal section and right to Star Wars.
Yeah. So yeah, that was that was quite good fun. Yeah, cuz I went to one in Blackpool when I was about 13, I think. Which was a few years ago. But I've never been to the London one. So yeah, it was good to see it.
That's awesome. Yeah, so as for me, I've also taken a bit of a hiatus from the podcast. I was also ill last week. But then the week before that, I had just come back from Borneo and Malaysia, which was really incredible. So I went for 2 weeks.

And basically for those who don't know, you've got Malaysia and then you've got Borneo, which is like an island off Malaysia. And bit of fun facts, cuz I learned this on this trip, embarrassing I didn't actually know it going into it. But Borneo is the oldest sort of rainforest in the world, which represents So I think it the Amazon, Borneo and the Congo Basin represent 78 to 80% of the world's remaining tropical rainforest. So it was so so cool to see sort of like all the animals and endemic I mean, orangutans are only endemic to there. Pygmies are endemic. And it was incredible. Like it was just It was a sort of like once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was boiling hot and super humid. But yeah, like we were literally staying on a jungle lodge that was on a river that was absolutely infested with crocodiles. And we saw a few actually, when it was quite scary. Um And I remember seeing like a little baby crocodile like on a rock, and then our tour guide was like, "Well, all like ah like zooming in and taking loads of pictures." And our tour guide was like,

"Yeah, but um look to your left. The mother's like the mother crocodiles are never too far off." And we like looked to our left, and all you could see was like eyes sinking into the water like very ominously. Um and it was kind of this amazing reminder that at every single point that you turned, you just see Oh my god, like birds. We saw pygmy elephants. Um orangutans, loads of different monkeys with their babies all up in the trees. It was yeah, it was fantastic.
Yeah, it was really really cool. It was really really cool. I really recommend it as well. It's like one of those trips that you go on where you feel like it's like once-in-a-lifetime.
Mhm. That reminds me um this has nothing to do with mobile games, but saying about the crocodiles like um some years ago I went to Florida, and obviously there's like alligators in Florida. Um and I found it really uh quite amusing and like very American, which I mean in a a nice way, but we were on like a little boat kind of going

through um and there were a load of like posh houses that, you know, you could kind of go out your front door and basically you're on the kind of river effectively. But that could um they said there's like alligators in there. So a few of us were on this boat, and someone asked the like tour guide like, "Well, are are you allowed to swim in the the water if there's alligators?" And I won't do the accent, but he basically said like, "Well, this is America. But you can swim in there if you want to, but there are alligators in there, so probably don't. But um I just appreciated that they're like Uh oh, you'd be better at that. You're with your American Oh god, don't Yeah, I don't don't really want to test that. But yeah, I know. So, apparently, on the talk of alligators and crocodiles, Florida's the only place in the world that has crocodiles and alligators that live together, which is pretty wild. So, did you see both, or did you just see the sort of alligators?

So, I think we only saw wild alligators, but there was like a farm, I guess, for lack of a better word, that had both. So, we did see both, but we didn't see wild crocodiles.
Right. It was really interesting, actually, because before we went on our trip, I was playing Resident Evil with my brother, cuz I'm in London visiting family, as well, or a bit before the trip. And one of the missions was like this huge sort of like mutant crocodile just like diving out the water, like eating everyone. And I was like, "Well, this is great, right before my trip in crocodile-infested waters."
Um good practice how to
Good practice. Yeah, exactly. Um okay, cool. So, uh anyways, before we get into the news, cuz we've got much to get through today. Um I wanted to give a few quick shout-outs for our upcoming events. We've got, of course, Pocket Gamer Connects Nordic, which is next week in Helsinki on October 20th and 21st. That will be part of uh Finnish Games Week. We've also got more events coming before the end of the year. Um which we will confirm shortly. And we've also got PGC London, which is back in

January. Right, let's get into it. Aaron, would you like to sort of kick us off with your first news story?
Yeah, sure. So, um so, yeah, my first story. So, the other week, I was invited to King's office in London um to try out Minecraft Blast and to talk to them about the game. Um So, this is a mobile Minecraft game that I think it was last year it got announced. There was a playtest in Malaysia, I think it was last November. Um and then it was like a a brief kind of availability window, and then we've kind of heard nothing about the game for almost a year. Um so it was quite sort of exciting to be um kind of invited to go and play some and confirm the game still exists and is still being developed. Um and yeah, so I spoke to them about um kind of the development side of things a bit and um apparently

um so I'd recommend reading the full interview not to be too shameless a plug, but um so apparently Mojang and um King started talking about doing this together like quite well, quite immediately after the Microsoft acquisition um of Activision Blizzard, which obviously owns King. Uh so Mojang had been wanting to make a mobile Minecraft game for some time and then obviously we knew that this acquisition was happening for some time before it went through. So they were kind of holding on hoping to speak to King afterwards to get the the ball rolling. Um so yeah, I spoke to them about kind of the I guess the ideation process and the months they spent to settle on the blast concept and then kind of uh yeah, developing it since then testing it. Um the kind of new I guess the newsy side of things uh outside of just me playing a game is that they're kind of expanding the play test now. So

as I last year they tested it in Malaysia. Um and then they told me that it's getting tested in I think Canada and Australia as well um this month in October. Uh it's also returned to Malaysia for a second play test. Um it sounds like it's still quite early days. Like what I played of it felt quite polished I would say, but they wouldn't kind of give any hint of a full release date or even a soft launch. Like they quite staunchly referred to it as a play test not a soft launch and as it's limited time. Um but yeah, I think it it's just quite an interesting case and obviously yeah, it turns out they've been working on it since before the film, but the like Minecraft movie obviously was a bit of a kind of surge in popularity, not that Minecraft was unpopular, but you know, kind of maybe brought in new audiences and it's just sort of interesting to hear that M- Mojang's been wanting to

use mobile to reach new players and yeah, it was very specifically about trying to get new world apps audiences playing the Minecraft IP even if it's not Minecraft itself. Um and it's much more about that than just trying to get Minecraft fans to play a spin-off. Um so yeah, I just think it's quite an interesting game that overall there hasn't been much news on. So yeah, I thought it was worth raising on the podcast.
Yeah, it was a really cool article and I and I really enjoyed it and I really recommend all our sort of listeners to go check it out. Out of curiosity cuz you played it obviously, when you played it, did it feel like Minecraft or did it kind of feel a bit like Candy Crush with blocks? Like what what kind of vibe did it give you?
yeah, so kind of both if that's not a rubbish answer. So they it's quite so the actual gameplay I guess is closer to Candy Crush like it isn't a match

three game, it's a blast game, but you know, you've got a board full of colored pieces and the more colored pieces are kind of next to each other, the kind of bigger thing you do with them and um you know, the gameplay is more that and puzzly. But then you kind of come out of a puzzle um so by completing it by completing a level you earn like energy which you can then spend to build things in like a voxel um a Minecrafty world. Uh so there's like a story campaign with your little character and there's like creepers trying to attack him and so you do some levels, get some energy, and then it's like you can build a house or a, you know, maybe a fence might take less energy or something to try and keep them out. You can't actually die and like game over or anything, but it's just kind of a bit of a a story mode. You complete levels to get energy, build up your little settlement

in this Minecraft world, which you can't just do anything you want. Like you'll kind of tap on an area and um, so I think there was like a balcony to the house was one thing that I built and you kind of had a choice of three styles of balcony, but you know, it was going to be a balcony if you built there, that kind of thing. Um, so I guess you can personalize it in kind of the aesthetic, but overall, if you build everything, you you can't decide I'm going to make, I don't know, a a submarine or something. Um, at least from what I've seen. Um, I did see, um, if you get a bit further through, it looks like you you end up on a pirate ship at some point. Um, but
Mhm.
Um, see, I I guess the gameplay really is more your kind of puzzle mobile game, but they have at least added this element of building Minecraft style, even if you

don't have the same freedom you would have in the and the main game.
Yeah, look, having read your article and doing a little bit of research, I love the thing that I loved just from seeing the sort of initial gameplay was how many Minecraft ideas they sort of packed into it. Like, I mean, your power-ups are TNT, fireworks, and end crystals, and skeletons shoot arrows that are your sort of boosters. So, it feels like Minecraft rather than just like a reskin. I thought that was quite Um
Yes.
And um
Thanks Thanks for reading the article.
Yeah, it was a great article. I really do recommend everyone to read it. And um I mean, it's always cool when you get to go to the HQ and sort of play the game yourself, which is awesome. Um and like you said as well, like the building aspect of it is really clever, too. Um earning sort of energy in the puzzles and then being able to spend it on your own Minecraft world, I think that's quite cute and like staying true to the game. Um
Mhm.
I wonder when they're going to release it cuz I feel like I would play this game. I would really um it'd be one that I would enjoy.
Yeah. And so, I did ask them and they

just couldn't couldn't even hint at it. So, they basically said they're taking things one step at a time and it's still in testing at the moment. I would say from what I played, it felt quite like a polished experience. So, maybe it won't be as as far off as it might appear.
Yeah. Fingers crossed. Um well, thanks, Aaron, for that um for that one. Um for me this week, I have a bit of a different story. Uh Supercell has set a date for Squad Busters shutdown. Now, it's a story that we've been expecting, I guess, for a year for a year now, if I'm not mistaken. Um there were rumbles of this that it wasn't doing too well. They've never been sort of secretive about that. But now they've actually confirmed when Squad Busters goes dark. Um so, that will be December 14th. And before that, the game will actually come off the App Store and Google Play on December 1st. So, anyone who has it uh installed can keep playing until the service switches off 2

weeks later. Um so, as a little bit of a backstory and a quick refresher, Squad Busters was Supercell's first new game IP in 5 years when it launched in 2024. Last October, the studio said it was ending development. And like I said, they were candid about why. They said by early 2025, they faced a crossroads. Um they could accept that the game could never become a global phenomenon uh Clash of Clans or it could take a big sort of creative swing. It took the sort of swing with the heroes update but Supercell said that they couldn't actually see a clear path forward even with the sort of several reworks that they tried. Um and any further changes would have turned it into a completely new game which obviously wouldn't be the ultimate aim. So looking at the numbers, the decline shows in the data. So I looked upon I looked at AppMagic a little bit for this to prep for um my story today. So in September IAP revenue was apparently only at 260,000 and over its whole life AppMagic estimates the game made roughly 67

million dollars which is quite a lot actually from 58 million downloads with the US accounting for 30% of spending. I say that's a lot but obviously there was something that went wrong there maybe it wasn't enough to cover costs etc. Um this one I guess when I sort of looked at this story it's a sad one. Uh it's a kind of sad milestone I guess for Supercell. It's the first time that the company has actually shut down a mobile game that it's launched globally. Supercell's famously killed a few games but they would have done this in the beta stage before actually going through with the global launch. So this is a what bit of a different different one for them. And Supercell said that it wanted to launch without the extended beta periods of its previous game. So I guess is this a sort of lesson that the long painful soft launch was there for a reason after all. I guess the good news is as well with all amongst all for for a silver lining in this amongst all the sort of layoffs going on in our industry right now they have in fact said that the team that's working on Squad Busters will remain at the company

but they'll move to other games and most of them are already starting to help out with other teams. So that's a little bit of a silver lining. It's not all sort of doom and gloom cuz that is something that we always worry about when games get shut down what's going to happen to the people working on it. Yeah this one was an interesting one for me. I think obviously we had seen this for a while. It kind of makes sense and as I was doing a little bit of research on it. I've never personally played it, but a lot of players who I saw um tried out the games and are Supercell fans, the sort of consensus what consensus was that the core game gameplay was a little bit confusing. They said that winning and losing was kind of a gamble. They didn't really see the reasons as to why you'd win or why they would lose. There wasn't a clear distinction with that. So there wasn't a coherent vision for the game they felt. Um and a lot of players said that they weren't actually a fan of the way monetization worked in the game. So I think all in all it kind of serves as a sort of lesson to them and I I'm

sure they're going to take away a lot from this. Um they have a lot to learn and you got not all of your games can be winners ultimately. So yeah, I thought this was a one worth highlighting cuz obviously Supercell's huge.
Yeah, as you said it's good at least that the team being, you know, kept on and reassigned I guess. Um it was similar this week actually Hill Climb is it like the Lego Adventures game? Um that's closing, but they've said that the the staff will be staying on. So obviously after recent years of all the layoffs and stuff, you know, it's a kind of a relief to see a few companies that are kind of able to close a game without just getting rid of even more people. Um obviously yeah, it's a shame that the game hasn't um kind of done as well as they were uh clearly hoping. I remember last year I spoke to them about the kind of big version 2.0 update, which I think was an attempt try and overhaul and save the game cuz um

evidently it wasn't doing as they hoped at that point. Um and yeah, I remember they removed quite a lot of features and overhauled like progression and stuff. So it's kind of it's a shame it hasn't um all paid off. Um
Yeah.
But yeah, at least they're kind of the staff is still going to be able to work on something else.
Yeah, that's always nice to see. And as I was kind of doing research for this cuz a lot of a lot of the times with these games they players will sort of release if dedicated player which I'm sure even though overall this game didn't work out every game sort of has this sort of segment of dedicated players. There's people out there who love this game. So, they won't even have private servers because they're not going to be releasing the code. So, uh it's ultimately going to be completely shut down. Um So, there's no options left for players. So, yeah, it's a bit of a sad one, but I guess that's uh that's the world of games, I guess.

Yes, the the nature of live service, I suppose. It's It's always nice when the game does get that kind of offline version. Um Going to like I don't know cuz like Mario Kart Tour shut down recently which um I think well, I've seen a few people who were disappointed they didn't do like an offline version of that cuz Nintendo did for like their Animal Crossing game where you could just kind of pay a one-off to kind of keep all your stuff and it would just be an offline game. I think that's something more studios should maybe consider cuz like yeah, it must be a bit gutting if you've been playing a game for years and then it's just gone. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a real shame, isn't it? Put all your hours into that, but hey ho, I guess yeah, what are you going to do?
So, um hopefully not to jinx this game after that previous one. Um but I wrote a data piece on Fire Emblem Shadows which is another Nintendo mobile game. Um it's recently celebrated

its first anniversary having made just shy of $900,000 which to put that in perspective, so the previous mobile Fire Emblem game, um did incredibly well, um and Shadow's first year has been just 0.3% comparing their like year one revenues. Uh so, you know, vastly smaller title. Um and a bit a bit like Supercell having had that big gap between kind of releases, um this was or this is, rather, Nintendo's first new mobile game um of the the decade, 6 years after Mario Kart Tour. So, it released in September 2025, and so it had its anniversary a couple of weeks ago now. Um and yes, it's been quite a modest first year. Um so, like Fire Emblem Heroes is still

going and still makes kind of millions a a month. I think it's they're quite an interesting kind duality that shows it's not just about having a popular IP on mobile, but you have to actually make you know, a a good game and or something that fans of that IP are interested in playing. Um cuz I've played some of Fire Emblem Shadows cuz I'm a big Fire Emblem fan, uh but it's sort of totally a spin-off, um but the main series is kind of turn-based tile-based combat, whereas um Fire Emblem Shadows is like a social deduction almost Among Us style game, uh but kind of years after that was massive. Um there's still kind of a tile-based element to it, but it's um it's not really turn-based in the same way, um and you basically play online with other

people and try and guess who's trying to sabotage your team. Um So, like the game itself is kind of fun enough to play. Um I sort of I haven't stuck with it for the full year, but I did probably play it for a couple of months after it came out. Um but yeah, compared to Fire Emblem Heroes, which is basically, you know, here is the main series, but adapted for mobile. Um yeah, I saw I think it shows that you you can't just repeatedly use an IP cuz it was big before. You know, if it's if it's a different genre, that could be a risk if you don't have the kind of the right overlap in interests in your player base. Um so, I guess to actually look at some of the numbers then. So, like Shadow's revenue peaked uh very early at uh 230,000 in its first month, uh which is over a third of its entire year one earnings.

Uh daily also peaked during launch month. So, it hit a lifetime high of 20,000 on the 26th of September 2025 and declined after that. And as I overall, it's made just shy of 900,000 in a year. Its monetization is also kind of less mobile-y, I guess you could say very in a very casual way. Uh cuz like Heroes mostly relies on a gotcha system, and then a few years in, they also introduced a like a monthly pass you could subscribe to to get quality of life features and extra characters and stuff. Uh whereas Shadows doesn't really have a gotcha in the same way for obtaining characters. Uh it's more It has a monthly pass, uh which typically features a like legacy character um from the kind of 35-plus year-old franchise. So, there's a lot of characters to choose from there, but they only do one a month. and if you don't buy the pass, you can get that

character for free the month or few months after anyway. Uh which I know a few games do. I think there's a Marvel game that's quite successful that has that model. Um but evidently that's kind of not working as well for the Fire Emblem IP as just a gotcha where like every 2 weeks there's a bunch of new characters that you know, spend money and you may or may not get them. But it seems like support is continuing for Shadows anyway, like coinciding with the anniversary, they've just um released what they're calling like book four, so it's sort of the fourth story arc and version 2.0. Um interestingly, they've also restocked, so there was a beginner support pack which you could buy, but it's kind of a one-time purchase, obviously aimed at beginners who've just started the game, but apparently that's been restocked uh kind of following the anniversary, so people who bought it in year one can buy it again now we're in year two, but which

to me that kind of signals they're trying to make more money from the existing players. Um they're trying to open up any avenues they can for um yeah, I guess monetizing people who have spent before, which makes sense. And yeah, the kind of anniversary version 2.0 updatey stuff did result in a spending rise. Um yeah, around the end of September. So like recent peaks have been around $2,000 like a day. But daily spending has risen above like 4,000 um around the anniversary. So that's not to suggest this is suddenly going to become a massive multi-billion dollar game, but um clearly you know, they've done something right around the anniversary then. Um And yeah, I kind of just hope kind of tying to our previous topic, that it doesn't just kind of go offline and people that do enjoy it, you know, end up just totally losing access. It would be a shame.

But I was going to say
here for now.
It's still here for now. And social deduction, listen, it's a hard genre on mobile. Um Among Us sort of blew up because, I mean, I remember playing it and being sort of really hooked during COVID, as I'm sure a lot of people were, because the fun of it was that friends played together on Discord and whatnot. You had those additional challenges. Mhm. I guess when I read that Fire Emblem, um correct me if I'm wrong, but they're sort of asking strangers to um lie to each other, it's a much harder sell.
Yeah, and um you don't have the I I guess cuz it's Nintendo, you don't have the kind of voice side of it to you know, actually speaking to strangers and trying to trick them. It's more a case of you each have a character on the board. And basically, if you're assigned to be the baddie on the map, if you're the baddie, you can like press a little button and choose someone to attack. So, like your character might be over on the right-hand side fighting enemies, but you're also attacking kind of at range your allies.

So, uh but, you know, it doesn't to them, it doesn't look like you're the one that's attacking necessarily.
Mhm.
Um so, there's some interesting strategies you can do. Like I used it like when I played to attack myself, so that I got my character got killed by my own move, cuz then you kind of look more innocent. Well, it's kind of harder, I think it's harder to do that kind of genre if you can't actually speak to people and try and convince them you're innocent or whatever. It's just
Yeah.
like monitoring the map.
I was going to say as well, like on the monetization side, I kind of actually kind of respect Nintendo that they didn't go gacha gacha this time, cuz from your previous um from our previous conversation about previous Nintendo games, Aaron, you've they've had criticism of gacha before, haven't they? Um, and I guess like a season pass is a gentler way to make money. It's not such aggressive monetization.
Yeah.
Um, you just sort of pay.
Kart Tour

started as a gacha and they actually removed those elements [clears throat] from it.
Yeah.
Um, so I think like Nintendo whilst Fire Emblem Heroes still has the gacha model, I think Nintendo are quite I guess conscious of how that looks.
Yeah, how that's perceived.
it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine they're losing sleep over this. I um, yeah, it feels like the kind of direction that they're heading anyway. Um,
Yeah.
but yeah, that was an interesting one. Thanks, Aaron. So, my final story for the day is that Google has launched Playground. Now, this story came out probably about a week ago and I've been wanting to talk about it for a while cuz it's an interesting one. I mean, um, what the story is is that they've launched as I mentioned this Playground which is a tool for building apps from text prompts. Now, what what Playground is is it's it's an experimental platform where you'll be able to create, play, and share custom

games using text prompts. Now, you don't actually have to have any code experience to do this. I think this is what they call vibe coding. So, you um, it it comes directly out of Google Labs. So, you pick either 2D or 3D. You can choose single player or multiplayer player and then you basically what you do is you describe the sort of mechanics that you want, the gameplay, the visual style, every sort of element that goes into what a game looks like. And you can even upload visuals um, and then AI, you guessed it, turn them turns them into game assets which match which matches your game's art style. So, it works around conversation. It's built around conversation and you can keep asking it for changes apparently. So, you can tweak everything as you go along. Um, and when you're done, you can keep the game private or you can share a link with friends or you can even publish it on the Playground Explore gallery, which means that other people will be able to see it and you'll be part of this sort of um, in-game leaderboard where I guess I'm not exactly sure how it works, but a

leaderboard sort of suggests that you'll be judged amongst other people and on how popular your game is and how um, much other people are playing it. Now, the games that uh, that are made on Playground are in fact cross-platform, so you can run them on mobile and desktop. So, for now it's limited and only available in the US to people aged 18 and over, but Google is planning to expand this into more countries. Browsing and playing is free um, and making games uses a weekly token system, which free users get a limited number of tokens and Google One AI subscribers get higher limits. So, I also think the interesting part about all of this is the Unity sort of angle of it all. So, Google plans to add Unity Spark integration, which actually brings sort of professional mechanics like high-fidelity uh, 3D and Unity runtime flexibility. Uh, Unity's are obviously a massive name for the gaming industry, so it's a pretty big name to bring on board and it

kind of suggests that they're looking to be somewhat serious about this at least in their own eyes because um, like I said, a lot of um, studios and devs use Unity. Um, so I read this and I thought immediately two things sort of stand out to me. So, first there's a sort of um, platform question of it all. So, Google has said that the games made on Playground won't flood Google Play for now. Um, I thought that was interesting that they said for now. Obviously, that suggests that things might change in the future. Um, and secondly, this is clearly aimed at the space that Roblox occupied. I'm sure I'm not the only one that uh, thinks this because obviously on Roblox users can create and share games. I guess the difference is now that you can literally just type a sentence and make a game. So yeah, I thought that was really interesting. I thought credit So obviously I haven't used it yet. It's I'm in the UK. I'm based in the US normally. So maybe I will just give it a go when I go back. Out of curiosity, but I watched a few YouTube videos on this just to see what it looks like and

I mean credit where credit's due. It seems like it's a pretty fun thing to mess around with and I feel like this is the kind of thing that people were talking about initially with the excitement of VR. Like, "Oh my god, imagine we could create our own sort of worlds um and we create our own sort of environments that we can build upon our games with and we can choose our own game and our adventure." These were conversations that we've been having. This seems like the sort of very very very first step in that. I mean you type up an idea and you can you can play it um and it's changing on the fly. So you're always able to update it etc. It kind of makes me think that we're able to sort of appreciate the craft of game design a bit more and what goes into it. And I'm sure some creative people will obviously do some very cool things with it. But as I was reading a little bit about this, I came across an article from Boone Ashworth from Wired. And what he said was he enjoyed it, but as he spent sort of 10 minutes in the gallery, he saw the cracks starting to show a bit. And what he said is that and this

is what I sort of imagined with it is that every game sort of looks like it came from the same template. So a racer, a shooter, and a puzzler all end up with the same sort of menus and the same background music. Now whether this is because it's very much in its infant stage, I'm not sure or if it's just this is where they want to cap it and this is what it's going to be and it's just to have a little bit of fun. Um Boone Ashworth said that the fighting feels the same, and the art styles blend together, and nothing really stands out. I don't know what I was expecting. I wasn't expecting anything huge, but like I said, I think it is a pretty cool first step, especially for those who have no coding experience. Like I'm not a dev. I I I have no idea about coding languages, but I would like to see what it looks like just to just to design a game for fun. I wouldn't be wanting to do anything serious with it. I wonder if everyone's of the same sort of mentality or like I said, if this is just a base level and they're looking to sort of refine it and make it better. But as it stands now, it's all looking very samey

from what I've seen um of people reviewing it and sort of uh using it to make their own games. So, yeah, an interesting one. It's definitely a new area that we're heading into with game design and as gamers, we're getting the these sort of new possibilities that we didn't have before. So, I thought it was a an interesting one.
Yeah, it seems like um Google in the US at the minute at least are doing a few kind of thing like a few updates along the these lines. Um because they announced sort of earlier this week about allowing um like people to make or even release apps, I think on the Play Store, but as like a personal account and then you can kind of invite people to access it, but it's not like a public app or game. Um so, it kind of feels like they're moving in the direction of I guess making it as easy as possible for people to be making their own ideas even if even if yeah, they have no idea how to code it

all actually develop it. Um which yeah, I guess it's good from a kind of creativity point of view. Um and as these things get better, as you say, you know, they might be a bit samey at the moment, but I'm sure the kind of uh the tech and the AI and what have you is only going to get smarter and able to become kind of more diverse.
Yeah, it does seem like the first step. Like I wonder what their aim is with all of this. I wonder if they're thinking like we want to be the first ones in there in terms of the um the big tech dogs to sort of democratize this kind of thing. Like I wonder what they're Like I'd love to be a fly on the wall in their sort of like boardroom meetings. Like what are they trying to achieve here? I guess they're trying to I mean it's a first, isn't it? Like we've not really seen this before with any other company like giving us the ability to create that and be part of that game design. It's interesting and I think it's really fun. Um and I definitely will be trying actually when I go back. So I would I would just like to see like what it looks like. And I have like already like ideas of games

that I would like to create. Um I wonder how much like sort of leeway it gives you and and uh like what the possibilities are. Like I wonder if it's just restricted to templates right now. I'm not not actually sure cuz I've not tried it.
Yeah, you'll have to report back on the podcast once you've gone back to
to say I'm going to like create my own game and uh create screenshots. Maybe we'll share Maybe we'll share it in here if anyone would care to see. Um yeah, I'll definitely like some kind of a review. Um But yeah, that's
like the official Pocket Gamer.biz game.
Oh god, that would Yeah. I should do that actually and then try and monetize it. Might as well put ads in there. I have fees. Um But yeah, that's that's kind of all the time that we have for this week. Uh thank you so much for everyone for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please like and subscribe. And yeah,

Aaron, thank you for being a fantastic co-host and joining me and sharing your insights today.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's been enjoyable. It's Yes, a bit weird without Craig here, but it um bit of a kind of fresh dynamic as well changing things up now and then. Hopefully he's enjoying his time in Canada.
Yeah, I'm sure we'll hear all about it, um, when he's back. Um, but yeah, thank you to everyone for listening and we will catch you next time.