Google Play's Indie Games Accelerator selects its biggest Asia-Pacific cohort yet
The 2024 Indie Games Accelerator (IGA) has selected 25 Asia-Pacific indie game developers, marking the largest Asia-Pacific cohort since the Google Play training program launched in 2018 — and the largest batch of participants by region this year. This group represents eight countries across Asia-Pacific — including Korea, Indonesia and India — and several mobile game genres like puzzle, role-paying and educational games.
Mobile gaming is set for a global resurgence in 2024, fueled by two things: the enthusiasm for gaming in Asia-Pacific and game studios’ increasing use of AI tools. Here in Asia-Pacific, mobile gaming has grown in popularity thanks to affordable smartphones, lightning-fast internet connectivity and a diverse range of games from Asia-headquartered gaming companies. With AI, developers can generate adaptive gameplay, realistic characters and dialogue to accelerate game development — meaning smaller teams can bring incredible gaming ideas to life faster than ever.
Over the course of 10 weeks, the IGA will connect 60 small and indie game studios (including 35 studios from outside of Asia-Pacific) with Google products — including AI and Cloud tools — and a global network of mentors who have succeeded in the gaming industry.
Historically, the IGA has had a track record of nurturing incredible talent from the Asia-Pacific region. Take Bombay Play, an India-based developer of multiplayer card games like Card Game 29 - Multiplayer Pro. They raised $2.5 million in seed funding after the program, including from investors they met on the IGA Demo Day. In their first year after the IGA, they used learnings from the program to grow their revenue tenfold from $10,000 to $100,000, and expand from a team of three developers to a company of over 40 people today.
The Bombay Play team grew from 3 in 2018 to over 40 people today.
“The IGA was much more than a networking opportunity,” says Bombay Play co-founder Abhas Saroha. “It was a chance to create lasting bonds with mentors and peers in the fast-evolving games industry.”
Indonesia’s Niji Games, creator of the charming 3D puzzle game Umbra, are also among IGA’s Asia-Pacific alumni. Through the IGA, Niji Games was able to strike a publishing deal with a games publisher who was also a program mentor — paving the way for Umbra's global expansion and over three million downloads internationally. After the IGA, Umbra was also nominated for “Best Game” in the International Mobile Gaming Awards (Southeast Asia).
There’s also Monstronauts from the Philippines. After the program, they launched Potion Punch, a delightful time management potions game, which surpassed 10 million downloads in a year. Using insights from IGA, Monstronaunts released a sequel game, Potion Punch 2: Cooking Quest, which picked up more than one million downloads the following year.
Meet the Asia-Pacific indie game studios in this year’s IGA cohort:
- Algorocks (Indonesia)
- Appspace Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (India)
- Avian Hearts Studios Pvt. Ltd (India)
- blackhammer (Korea)
- CLOVER-FI Games (The Philippines)
- Crimzen Red Studios (India)
- Dreams Studio (Indonesia)
- Dunali Games (India)
- LiberalDust (Korea)
- Gonggamore Contents Inc. (Korea)
- Hexpion (Vietnam)
- Kudos Games (Australia)
- Lentera Nusantara (Indonesia)
- Lunarite Studio (Korea)
- Niku Games Studio (India)
- npckc (Japan)
- ONDI (Vietnam)
- Ondot Inc. (Korea)
- Own Games (Indonesia)
- Panthera Studio (Vietnam)
- Playdew (Pakistan)
- QueseraGames Co., Ltd. (Korea)
- Studio Boxcat (Korea)
- WASD Interactive (India)
- Whoyaho Corp. (Korea)
