With over 300,000 games on the App Store, it's an understatement to say there's a lot of choice.

Of course, that's no bad thing, because without those games Apple's marketplace wouldn't be the vibrant, varied, and attractive marketplace it is today.

What it does mean, however, is that it can be difficult for gamers to find new experiences that are right for them. Fortunately, that's where Player1 comes in.

"Player1 is, quite simply, a search engine for mobile games. We are a UK-based start-up with a focus on providing players with powerful search and recommendation tools to easily find the games that they will most enjoy," explains Kevin Corti, co-founder and product lead at the company behind said tool, EveryonesPlaying.

"We are driven to help players navigate through the murky seas of the mobile game ecosystem to find exactly what they are looking for as opposed to only being shown what an ad network, publisher or platform is paying to promote."

Searching with style

As a search engine, Player1 will be completely impartial. Users will be able to 'uniquely search' by combining game genres and ordering by popularity or average ratings.

Results can then be filtered in a number of ways, such as by release date, age, pricing model, and number of user ratings.

"There is no ‘curation’ of results and we do not favour any particular genres or pricing models because we do not use download volumes or revenue to dictate visibility to the user," says Corti.

"This is, however, just the first baby steps and as we add more data source, search options and intelligence to the service, then it will become ever more comprehensive."

According to Corti, mobile gamers are extremely frustrated and very cynical when it comes to finding mobile games, with most feeling that visibility wasn't based on marking expenditure, rather than merit.

"We asked hundreds of mobile gamers how they currently go about [and feel about] the process of finding mobile games and boy are they frustrated," offers Corti.

"There is huge cynicism with the ecosystem at present, largely because visibility is mainly based on marketing expenditure rather than finding exactly what you want.

"When we started testing Player1 the overriding feedback was that it needed to be simple, transparent and hassle-free. It should take just a few seconds to perform a search and the results should accurately reflect what they are looking for not what a platform is trying to promote.

"We think we have achieved that with the first version. It is very much an MVP though and we’re eager to see how people use it in the wild and what they want added."

True discovery

EveryonesPlaying knows exactly what Player1 needs to be, and Corti believes the company's firm focus, unrelenting drive, and ultimately, it's ethical resolve, will ensure Player1 makes an impression with mobile gamers.

"Player1 – and everything that EveryonesPlaying will provide for consumers – is developer and publisher agnostic," says Corti.

"We believe that a true discovery service cannot derive revenue from games makers, publishers, or advertising in exchange for providing consumer visibility without jeopardising the integrity of the search results and, thus, consumer trust.

"The Player1 database includes every game currently available in the AppStore, and our search results are based purely upon the user’s search criteria. We are not an advertising network or paid-promotion service.

"Every game has an equal chance of being found by our users. Whether any given game appears in search results and how often depends, ultimately, on whether consumers are looking for them."

Before it reaches gamers on a global scale though, Player1 must first find its feet in the UK. 

"Once we have refined the core proposition - with the UK AppStore - then the rollout to other countries will be pretty quick."

"It's more a question of making sure that the user experience is optimal and that the infrastructure behind the platform is scalable as well as taking advantage of key promotion opportunities as they are presented. Localisation is a pretty trivial issue for us."

"It's our company goal to become the default discovery channel of choice for mobile gamers globally across all mobile platforms so rest assured we will be going as fast as we can."

Those of you interested in Player1 can sign up for early access right here, or you can even meet Kevin and the EveryonesPlaying team at this year's Pocket Gamer Connects in Helsinki. 

Thanks to Kevin for his time.