- Cheryl Tan
Apple Announces Winners For App Store Awards 2022
It's always interesting to check out the winners of Apple's App Store Awards, and it's no different this year with 13 winning apps across the App of the Year, Game of the Year and Cultural Impact categories. Here are some of our favourites from this year's list.
Let's look at the App of the Year winners first, with the iPad and Apple Watch winners really showcasing the main use cases of the products. The iPad App of the Year winner is GoodNotes 5, which is widely recognised as one of the best notetaking apps on the iPad. With a plethora of features that take advantage of the Apple Pencil like annotation, handwriting recognition and more, it's little wonder why GoodNotes 5 bagged the award.
As for the Apple Watch App of the Year winner, that award goes to Gentler Streak Workout Tracker, and it's definitely an app to check out for fitness junkies and enthusiasts. Created by a team from Slovakia, this workout and fitness tracker recognises that rest and recovery are as important as intensity when it comes to leading an active life. Katrina Lotrič, Co-Founder and CEO, Gentler Stories, stated: "Instead of chasing outside goals and challenges, we invite you to turn inwards to follow what your body really needs in that moment, and to then support that with the right action."
With automatic data population and integration with HealthKit, Gentler Streak is able to pull workout data and more from Apple Health to offer features like a personalised shortlist of favourite workouts that suit the user's current fitness and rest levels, recommended heartrate zones during those workouts and more. For exercise enthusiasts who want to be able to easily maintain a balance between working hard and resting, this is a great app to use.
The Game of the Year awards kick off with Apex Legends Mobile bagging the award for iPhone Game of the Year, which was released earlier in 2022 and is one of the biggest free-to-play battle royale shooter games in recent years.
Moncage, an optical illusion puzzle game inside of a cube, is the iPad Game of the Year, and it's certainly recommended to play it on an iPad to view the unique worlds on a bigger screen.
This year, Apple has also selected a few Cultural Impact winners, apps that made an impact in lives and influenced culture. As we reach our third year of dealing with COVID-19, mental health is an important issue that has been brought to the forefront of many discussions. How We Feel, one of the Cultural Impact winners, is an app that aims to help users log and understand how they feel daily, as well as provide strategies and alternative methods to address and handle those emotions.
Keeping hydrated and remembering to drink eight glasses of water has been an issue for many people for the longest time, and plenty of apps exist to remind you to drink up but few do it as adorably as Waterllama. With 45 cute characters to fill up each time you take a drink of water, daily water goals and more, this app certainly gives people an incentive to stay hydrated throughout the day.
Last but not least, Inua - A Story in Ice and Time is an interactive point-and-click adventure game that traverses the story of the Franklin expedition in 1845. With some historical elements and the general scenario being retained, the game is mainly adapted from an original story by Nathalie Frassoni and Frédéric Bouvier, with supernatural elements inspired by Inuit tales and legends as well. If you enjoyed the narrative story-telling game Bury Me, My Love, you'll be glad to know that the creators of that game are also co-creators of Inua.
“This year’s App Store Award winners reimagined our experiences with apps that delivered fresh, thoughtful, and genuine perspectives,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “From self-taught solo creators to international teams spanning the globe, these entrepreneurs are making a meaningful impact, and represent the ways in which apps and games influence our communities and lives.”
For the full list of this year's App Store Awards winners, check out Apple's newsroom post here.