Google Area 120’s GameSnacks Brings Casual Web Games to Low-End Devices

Google has released a collection of bite-sized, casual games called GameSnacks from its Area 120 development lab. GameSnacks isaimed at people using devices with low-end hardware.

The games available on GameSnacks areoptimized to run smoothly even on 2G/3G network speeds. To achieve this, the games load the bare minimum assets required to run the game and fetches additional elements on demand. This way, the initial delay to open up the page gets reduced.

“Our Area 120 team works with developers to achieve fast performance by reducing the size of the initially-loaded HTML page, compressing additional assets such as scripts, images, and sounds, and waiting to load them until necessary,”wrote Ani Mohan, General Manager at GameSnacks in a blog post.

Google claims that thegames in GameSnacks platform will typically load within 4 seconds. In contrast, the software giant points out that similar web game offerings take almost 12 seconds to get to the game’s home page.

GameSnacks games arebuilt on HTML5andsupport touch, keyboard, and mouse controls. You can play these games on Android, iOS, and from your PC’s web browser. I tried playing a few GameSnacks on a touch-supported laptop and they worked just fine.

All of the games in the GameSnacks library will also be available on Gojek’s GoGames platform. For the uninitiated, Gojek is a leading Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant and through this partnership, Google aims to make GameSnacks accessible to gamers from Southeast Asian countries, starting with Indonesia.

Considering the lightweight nature of these games, we could expect the software giant to integrate GameSnacks into its popular apps, such asGoogle Payor the Google Go app in developing countries like India. Also, if the number of games and developers grow and it attracts people with new partnerships, then it could also go head to head withFacebook Gamesin the near future.

The catalog is currentlylimited to just 6 HTML gamesfrom game developers including Famobi, Inlogic Games, Black Moon Design, Geek Games, and Enclave Games. If you are an HTML5 game developer and interested to bring your game to GameSnacks, you may reach out to the Area 120 team by filling outthis form.

Check out GameSnacks games from the linkright hereand share your experience in the comments.

Subin B

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.

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