New Game Digest: Meta's Pocket App, Century's Frozen Manor, and Upcoming Releases

A fresh batch of global releases, pre-registrations, and early-stage soft launches has surfaced across the mobile and multi-platform gaming landscape. Meta’s AI-powered minigame creation and sharing application, Pocket, has expanded its rollout to US players following an initial availability phase in Brazil. Functioning similarly to TikTok, the application enables users to craft brief interactive experiences and games using touch, text, photos, and sound via AI prompts, populating a feed of user-generated items known as 'gizmos.' Industry reports indicate the early-testing application has launched without formal marketing or public relations backing thus far.

In the realm of upcoming soft launches and expansions, Whiteout Survival creator Century Games is preparing a new merge title titled Frozen Manor: Merge Mystery. Product tracking indicates the game is targeted for Android devices, though it has yet to record downloads on Google Play. Meanwhile, Tencent and Krafton are targeting players using lower-end hardware with a slimline edition titled PUBG Mobile Light. Pre-registrations for the reduced-demand version are scheduled to open on August 25, ahead of a full rollout later in the year. Additionally, Tencent and Gameloft's open-world crime title Gangstar: Mirage City is rolling out across Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Eastern and Central Europe on iOS and Android.

Several established titles are also making transitions to mobile platforms. Feral Interactive has opened pre-registrations for its upcoming mobile port of the 2014 co-op action-adventure game, Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, ahead of a scheduled September 8 launch on iOS and Android. Level-5's slow-life RPG, Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, is now available on mobile platforms for $24.99 with full cross-play and cross-save functionality, following its prior releases on PC and consoles. Furthermore, Rogue Snail's dark fantasy action RPG roguelike, Hell Clock, has launched on Android via Google Play following previous releases on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox.

Social and alternative storefront updates also feature in the current landscape. CityDays has opened sales for The Traitors: Anywhere, an officially licensed social deduction game designed for WhatsApp groups of up to 30 players, with pricing starting at £8.99 per player ahead of a UK and Ireland debut in early September. In digital storefront news, Aptoide’s dedicated games storefront has returned to Google Play in the US after more than ten years, marking the first rival Android app store to join Google's Play Catalog Access programme.