Google unveils the official Play Awards nominees

The Google Play Awards are coming at Google I/O on May 19, but today Google released the nominees for each category. With ten categories and five nominees per category, what we’re looking at here is a Who’s Who among Android apps, so even if you’re not super interested in the Play Awards, you should at least take a look at this list and consider giving some of these apps and games a whirl.

The first category will go to a Standout Startup. This award is reserved for developers who are new to the scene but who have nonetheless achieved immediate growth. Contenders for this category are Dubsmash, Hopper, Musical.ly, Robinhood, and Vrse.

Standout Indie is a similar category, but it applies to games rather than apps in general. This award, which focuses on artistic design and innovative gameplay, will go to Alphabear, Alto’s Adventure, Fast like a Fox, Neko Atsume: Kitty Collector, or Prune.

Next up is the Best Families App, which aims to award apps or games that encourage younger users to be creative. Nominees are Card Wars – Adventure Time, LEGO Jurassic World, My Very Hungry Caterpillar, Thinkrolls2, and Toca Nature.

On the aesthetics side of things, we’ve got the Best Use of Material Design award, which will go to either Bring!, Robinhood, The Fabulous, Todoist, or Vevo.

The Best Use of Google Play Game Services award will go to a game that make clever use of GPGS, and the names on the list are Sea Battle 2, Table Tennis Touch, Tapventures, TowerMadness 2, and Zombie Highway 2.

The Early Adopter Award praises apps which take advantage of emerging technology, so the apps on this list are Glide, Mechanic Escape, Minecraft: Story Mode, World Around Me, and Zumper.

Go Global is a category that awards apps which have achieved flexibility and popularity across a wide variety of regions. The nominees for this category are Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle, Freeletics Bodyweight, Memrise, Musixmatch, and Pokemon Shuffle Mobile.

Most Innovative rewards just what you think it would, and contending for the prize are Fast like a Fox, NYT VR, SmartNews, The Fabulous, and This War of Mine.

Finally, we get to the biggest awards of all. Best App is a toss up between BuzzFeed News, Colorfy, Houzz, TuneIn Radio, and Yummly, and Best Game will come down to Alphabear, Clash of Kings, Clash Royale, MARVEL Future Fight, or Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes.

The ceremony will livestream on May 19th at 7pm PDT, so stay tuned to see who wins this battle of app titans. Let us know what you think about Google’s picks in the comments. Did any of your favorites get overlooked this year?