New apps and games on Day 3 of Google Play sale

Another day passes, and with that another set of apps and games become available at a discount at the ongoing Google Play Store sale. Google kicked off the sale in celebration of 25 billion downloads from Google Play. Top apps in the Google Play Store are being sold at 25 cents (around Rs 13).

The new games and apps available on Google Play at the discounted price are: Amazing Alex, TuneIn Radio, Temple Run: Brave, HD Widgets, PicSay Pro – Photo Editor, Monsters Ate My Condo, Flick Golf!, ezPDF Reader PDF Annotate Form, Kids ABC Letters, Rebuild, Zombie Smash, mSecure – Password Manager, Mass Effect Infiltration and Dragon, Fly! Full. You can buy the apps here.

Day 3 of the Google Play store has kicked off

Here is a quick look at some of the games and apps on sale:

• Amazing Alex: is a game in which players build intricate Rube Goldberg machines to help Alex clean his room.
• Mass Effect Infiltration: has the player in the shoes of a rogue Cerberus Agent Randall Ezno. The game takes place alongside the events of the Mass Effect series. 
• Monsters Ate My Condo: is a simple puzzle game in which you feed condos to monsters. The game is a parody of Japanese culture.
• Rebuild: is a turn-based strategy game set during a zombie apocalypse.
• ZombieSmash: is described by Zynga as a “Survival Comedy”, which is a physics-based tower defence game with an undead theme.
• PicSay Pro: is a photo editor that gives you some features to edit, sharpen, crop, and distort photos. You can also apply red eye correction, and use clip art.
• TuneIn Radio Pro: allows you access online radio stations to listen to your choice of music genre or show. This is a paid version of a free app that comes with advertisements.
• Temple Run: Brave: is a spin-off of the popular Temple Run game. In this game, you play as the main protagonist, Brave - Merida. The game includes archery as a new mechanic.
• ezPDF Reader PDF Annotate Form: lets you read PDFs and gives you advanced options, such as setting up annotations.
• Flick Golf!: is a simple game where you flick a golf ball into the hole on the golf course.

The games and apps available yesterday on the Google Play sale were: Cut the Rope: Experiments, doubleTwist Alarm Clock, World of Goo, Sketchbook Mobile, FIFA 12 by EA Sports, Paper Camera, Shark Dash, Going to Bed Book-Boynton, Flick Nations Rugby, Dungeon Village, Mini Motor Racing, Color & Draw for kids phone ed, and Color & Draw for kids HD.

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It was recently revealed that India’s inclusion in the official list of countries where developers could register as certified Google Checkout Merchants was short lived. Pluggd.in’s Ashish Sinha writes, “So for India based Android app developers, things are back to what it was earlier – i.e. you cannot sell paid apps in the Play store (some workaround here). We have asked Google to update us on the final status (or was it some drunken employee updating the support page?). For sure, Google needs to revisit this strategy. If not, Microsoft is going to snatch away these Android app developers with a better integrated strategy (it’s already happening)”.

Earlier, Indian developers needed to go to a country where Google Checkout merchants are allowed, such as the US, and register a local bank account in the name of a US resident in order to sell apps on the Google Play Store. With reports about India featuring on that list, it did seem as if troubles were over. Now, however, things stand the way they were.

Smartphone apps are serious business, though developers of Android apps were left in limbo. In India, developers were only allowed to publish free apps, and this had limited the potential for innovative apps because of lack of incentive.

Reports quoted P R Rajendran, Director of Next Wave Multimedia, a Chennai based company as saying, “We have lived with this condition for some time now where we literally run two companies, and are subject to dual taxation". He added further that, “This is a welcome move on the part of Google”. Rajendran’s company has published more than ten apps on both Apple iTunes and Google Play.