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Why A Day in the Woods couldn't come to Google Play before but now it can

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Why A Day in the Woods couldn't come to Google Play before but now it can

Fairy tale puzzler A Day in the Woods came out for iOS on April 2nd but wasn't announced for Android until earlier this month. There's a reason for that. A couple of them, in fact.

Megan Hughes of South Africa-based studio RetroEpic Software told us that A Day in the Woods had to be iOS-exclusive at first. At least, it had to be as far as the studio could see at the time.

"Currently, there is no way for a South African company to set up a merchant account and sell a game for a premium on the Google PlayStore," Hughes explained.

Apparently, this will should be changing in the future, but for RetroEpic, this meant that that an Android version of the game was trickier than it should be.

"Our options were left, then, to releasing for free or possibly make use other monetization options which didn't appeal to us," Hughes added.

"It would also have been unfair to release a premium version on iOS and a free version on Android, so ultimately we avoided Android conversations altogether."

A Day in the Woods

However, after launching the iOS version of A Day in the Woods, Amazon got in touch with RetroEpic to see if the game could be brought to its own Android app store.

This option hadn't occurred to RetroEpic before this and so with it becoming open the studio started to work on an Android version.

"In the meantime, we saw friends of ours at QCF Design release their game, Desktop Dungeons, via Finji on the Google Playstore," Hughes said.

"We took a shot at contacting Finji to see if they might be able to help us do the same, not expecting that they would, but they were more than happy to help us out!"

Finji is a developer and publisher founded by Adam and Rebekah Saltsman (creator of Canabalt) and is based in Texas, North America.

Due to this, none of the restrictions placed on South African studios affects Finji so it can publish games for them on the various app stores.

A Day in the Woods

By working with Finji, RetroEpic is now able to finally bring A Day in the Woods to Android via both the Amazon App Store and Google Play. As with all fairy tales, then, it's a happy ending.

With all this sorted out, RetroEpic is hoping to bring its next game - a memory-matching puzzler called Ginjah - to iOS but also Android, providing that A Day in the Woods does well on the platform.

A Day in the Woods should be available for £3.99 / $4.99 on Android on July 30th.

You can already purchase it for iOS on the App Store at the same price.

Chris Priestman
Chris Priestman
Anything eccentric, macabre, or just plain weird, is what Chris is all about. He turns the spotlight on the games that fly under the radar.