Skich’s new app brings social discovery to mobile game recommendations

techcrunch.com:

A new startup called Skich wants to help mobile users find games to play that better match their interests. To do so, it’s created a game recommendation app that carefully toes the line in order to not bump up against Apple’s App Store rule that prohibits other apps from acting as App Stores themselves.

Instead, Skich simply lets you “match” with games you might like using a card-style interface, similar to a dating app like Tinder. Here, a left swipe indicates you’re passing on the game and a right swipe adds the game to your “Want” list — a collection of games that you want to try. You can also swipe up to read more about the game in question.

In your “Want’ list, tapping the link on the game will redirect users directly to the App Store or Google Play — depending on your platform — to download the title you want to check out.

There are no financial incentives to either like or install individual games in Skich, so this is not a paid user acquisition channel in that sense. Users aren’t promised in-game rewards, virtual currency or anything else. It’s just a recommendation. Upon first launch, users simply tap on the categories of games they most enjoy  — like board, adventure, card, casino, educational, strategy, word, racing, sports, casual, puzzle, and others. Using this initial input, Skich will customize its feed of games to the end user.  And if you see a game you’ve already tried, you can tap the “Played” button then optionally respond with an emoji and review detailing how much you enjoyed (or didn’t enjoy) the game’s experience.

The company says it started off by gathering some of the most popular games on the app stores, then showing them to users as recommendations. Users can also suggest the games they want to