Build Games for Android
Build amazing games to reach an audience of more than 2 billion Android devices. Learn about new tools and best practices to support your development and game performance.
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Develop
Optimize
Launch & Iterate
Develop
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Develop | Environment
Build your game in Unity
Update your build and player settings in Unity to export Android-compatible app bundles and Gradle projects. Use guides and samples from Google to speed up your development time.
Android Developers
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Develop | Privacy and Security
Determine sensitive data access needs
If your game needs access to sensitive data on individual devices—such as player location or access to the file system—be sure to get permission from your players.
Android Developers
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Develop | Environment
NDK
The Android NDK is a toolset that lets you implement parts of your app in native code, using languages such as C and C++.
Android Developers
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Develop | Play Mechanics
Use Google Play games services to enhance and simplify your game development
Add features to your games that keep players more engaged such as seamless zero-click sign-in, friends, cloud save, achievements, leaderboards, and more with Google Play games services.
Google Developers
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Develop | Privacy and Security
Create a seamless sign-in experience
Use Google Play Games Sign-In to give players easy access to their achievements and leaderboard profiles.
Google Developers
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Develop | Privacy and Security
Secure your game
Use the SafetyNet libraries to protect your game against device tampering, bad URLs, potentially harmful apps, and fake users.
Android Developers
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Develop | Play Mechanics
Enable interactions between nearby devices and people
With the Nearby APIs you can let your users work or play together better when they're close, within about 100 feet: easily set up multiplayer games, ad hoc groups, sharing, or collaborative sessions.
Google Play
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Develop | Play Mechanics
Create immersive virtual reality experiences for Daydream and Google Cardboard
Create virtual reality experiences with the Google VR SDK that will entertain and educate users, whether they’re using a Daydream-enabled smartphone or Google Cardboard.
Google Play
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Develop | Environment
Build your game in Unreal
Add support for custom launch screens, in-app purchases, achievements, and more in Unreal Engine.
Unreal Developers
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Develop | Graphics
Develop games for all screens
When developing a game for Android, it's important to anticipate the variety of possible player experiences and remain adaptive to a player's real-time interaction needs. By supporting different player experiences, you increase gameplay flexibility, helping you expand your game's reach.
Android Developers
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Develop | Graphics
Learn about rendering in game loops
What you need to do is match the display's frame rate, and advance game state according to how much time has elapsed since the previous frame. There are several ways to go about this: Use the Android Frame Pacing library (recommended), Stuff the BufferQueue full and rely on the 'swap buffers' back-pressure, or Use Choreographer (API 16+).
Android Developers
Optimize
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Optimize | Delivery
Support 64-bit architectures
Get your game ready for the upcoming 64-bit support requirement by checking your game's library compatibility.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Graphics, Delivery
Reduce game size
Smaller games are faster to download and require less data on initial install, both of which lead to higher install conversions.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Graphics, Delivery
Play Asset Delivery
Play Asset Delivery is Google Play’s solution for delivering large amounts of game assets by extending the Android App Bundles format. All asset packs are hosted and served on Google Play.
Google Play
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Optimize | Graphics, Delivery
Target texture compression formats
Learn about popular texture compression formats used in games and how to target them in Android App Bundles.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Graphics, Memory, CPU
Tools for optimizing your game
Use these powerful tools to analyze CPU usage, memory usage, and graphics calls.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Graphics, Memory, Power, CPU
Improve your game`s performance
Use Systrace reports to help you optimize your game's performance, making it as dependable as possible on the variety of Android devices that run your game.
Android Developers
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Optimize | CPU
Identify CPU hot spots
Import your game into Android Studio to debug your app and profile it with the built-in native CPU profiler.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Memory
Android Studio: Native Memory Profiler
The Android Studio Memory Profiler now includes a Native Memory Profiler for apps deployed to physical devices running Android 10 or later.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Graphics
Achieve proper frame pacing
Use the Android Frame Pacing library to help synchronize your game engine's rendering process and the platform's display pipeline.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Graphics
Optimize your frame rate
Use the Android Performance Tuner to measure and optimize frame rate stability and graphical fidelity across many Android devices at scale.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Graphics
Download the Android Game SDK
The Android Game SDK is a set of libraries that you can use to enhance your game on Android. It is a regularly updated library separate from the Android platform.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Debugging
Detect and diagnose crashes
Use Android vitals, stack traces, and Logcat to determine where unhandled exceptions or signals occur in your game's code.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Memory
Manage memory effectively in games
Take steps to avoid low memory conditions affecting your game.
Android Developers
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Optimize | Graphics
Profile game graphics
Android GPU Inspector is a GPU profiling tool. You can take traces of your games and find interesting performance insights to help you make graphics optimization decisions.
AGI Documentation
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Optimize | Memory, Debugging
Debugging native memory use
Android provides a suite of tools to help you diagnose memory access and allocation errors in your game's native code.
Android Developers
Launch & Iterate
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Launch | Marketing, Analyze, Engage, Publish, Grow
Launch your game on Google Play
Learn about the key steps and tools available to confidently launch a high quality game on Google Play.
Google Play
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Launch | Publish
Create an Android App Bundle in Unity
Update your build settings to create Android App Bundles when using supported hardware configurations.
Unity Developers
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Launch | Grow, Engage
Instant play games
Full games that are packaged using Google Play Instant are eligible to be featured prominently on the homepage of the Google Play Games app. These instant games are full experience games, not trial versions.
Android Developers
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Launch | Analyze, Engage
Stay connected with your user base
Respond to user feedback within the context of your favorite customer support toolkit using the Google Play Developer Reply to Reviews API.
Google Play
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Launch | Grow
Get started with Google Play Instant
With Google Play Instant, people can tap to try an app or game without installing it first. Increase engagement with your Android app and gain more installs by surfacing your instant app across the Play Store, Google Search, social networks, and anywhere you share a link.
Google Play
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Launch | Analyze
Android vitals
Android vitals is an initiative by Google to improve the stability and performance of Android devices. When an opted-in user runs your app, their Android device logs various metrics, including data about app stability, app startup time, battery usage, render time, and permission denials. The Google Play Console aggregates this data and displays it in the Android vitals dashboard.
Google Play
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Launch | Publish, Grow
Launch checklist
This checklist brings together the processes you should follow to ensure your app is launched successfully. The tasks are numbered to give you an idea of the normal sequence in which they would be actioned. However, you can handle the tasks in any sequence that works for you and skip steps as appropriate.
Google Play
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Launch | Grow
Implement the right monetization strategy
Learn about the monetization options available on Google Play and combine them into a strategy that maximizes your app’s revenue.
Google Play
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Launch | Grow
Billing
Sell digital content in your apps, whether in-app products or subscriptions. Google Play handles checkout details so you never have to directly process any financial transactions, and your customers experience a consistent and familiar purchase flow.
Google Play
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Launch | Publish, Grow
Use the Google Play Billing Library with Unity
This guide describes how to implement Billing Library features in your Unity game.
Google Play
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Launch | Marketing, Publish
Make a compelling Google Play store listing to drive more installs
The Google Play Store is committed to connecting users with a diverse catalog of high quality apps. Our recommendations are composed of a mix of human curation and algorithmic calculations, of which, the two largest components considered are relevance and quality. The best practices below explain how we evaluate quality for your app, independent of which user might download it.
Google Play
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Launch | Analyze, Publish
Use testing tracks to get invaluable early feedback from users
Use the Google Play Console to release early versions of your app for internal testing, or to trusted users for closed and open testing. Get the feedback you need to make improvements to your app before its full release.
Google Play
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Launch | Analyze, Grow
Convert more visits to installs with store listing experiments
Get more installs by using store listing experiments to find the best app icon, images, video, and descriptions for your app on Google Play.
Google Play
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Launch | Marketing, Grow
Pre-registration
Pre-launch marketing helps drive awareness and build anticipation for apps and games before launch. Capture early consumer interest and accelerate launch performance with a pre-registration campaign on Google Play.
Google Play
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Launch | Marketing, Grow
Indie Games
We love the innovation and art that indie game developers are bringing to Google Play. We aim to help all developers create great games and get them in front of as many people as possible.
Google Play
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Launch | Analyze, Grow
Use pre-launch reports, Firebase features, and Android vitals to improve your app
Your app business relies on delivering high-quality apps. Part of achieving this quality is testing your apps on a range of devices. The pre-launch reports use automated tests on real devices that can identify layout issues, provide crash diagnostics, locate security vulnerabilities, and more. You can then run custom tests using Firebase Test Lab, get details about errors in your app from Firebase Crashlytics, and use Android vitals to search more deeply for quality issues.
Google Play
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Launch | Grow
Browse and reply to app reviews to positively engage with users
Users can leave reviews and rate your app in Google Play. Browse these ratings and reviews, and reply to users from the Play Console website or the Play Console app.
Google Play
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Launch | Analyze
Compare your app’s Android vitals and ratings with custom peer groups
With custom peer groups, you can compare your app’s Android vitals and ratings data with a group of apps that you select.
Google Play
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Launch | Grow
App campaigns
With App campaigns, you can promote your iOS or Android app on Google Search, YouTube, Google Play, and more. Our technology will optimize your App ads to reach the audience most interested in apps like yours.
Google Play
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Launch | Marketing, Grow
Create custom store listings to target specific countries
With custom store listings, you can tailor your app’s store listing to appeal to specific user segments in countries that you select. If your app has a global audience, you can use custom store listings to accurately showcase your app’s features and communicate what’s great about your app in ways that are relevant to users in different countries.
Google Play
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Launch | Publish
Release app updates with staged rollouts
You can release an app update to production and test tracks using a staged rollout. With a staged rollout, your update reaches only a percentage of your users, which you can increase over time.
Google Play
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Launch | Publish, Analyze
View & restrict your app`s compatible devices
After you've uploaded at least one APK to your Play Console, you can view the catalog of available devices and review which devices are compatible with your app. To help ensure the widest availability of your app, review your supported and excluded devices lists regularly.
Google Play
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Launch | Marketing
Add support for instant access
Learn how integrating Google Play Instant functionality into your game can help you acquire more users by offering an installation-free experience.
Android Developers
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Launch | Analyze, Grow
Analyze user reviews to understand opinions about your app
Find out what issues are trending in your app's reviews to learn what changes to your app or game users want most.
Google Play
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Launch | Engage
Use Google Play games services to create more engaging game experiences
Add features to your games that keep players more engaged such as video recording, achievements, cloud save, leaderboards, friends, and more with Google Play games services.
Google Play
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Additional resources
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Stack Overflow
Games articles on Android Developers Blog
Mobile Games Quarterly Newsletter
Google Play Games on Medium
Academy for App Success
