Epic releases Unreal Match 3 smartphone game to teach people how to use its tools

Epic Games is best known among consumers for its entertainment releases, but the company usually uses those games as showpieces for its other technology products. That’s definitely the case with its latest launch on Android.

Unreal Match 3 is your standard puzzler where you’ll need to connect three pieces to make them disappear and score points. It’s out now on Android, and it is coming soon to Apple’s iOS. But this isn’t just another Bejeweled clone, because Epic is using this app as a way to introduce people to the many features it has built into its Unreal Engine game-making toolkit. This is similar to how the company is using its totally free Unreal Tournament game to show PC developers the capabilities of its tech. With mobile games on pace to generate $30 billion in revenue in 2015, it makes sense that Epic is trying to show that Unreal Engine isn’t just for big-budget triple-A PC and console releases.

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To help people understand Unreal Match 3 and how it works, Epic isn’t just making the game available on smartphones — it is also releasing the full source code, scripts, and art assets for outsiders to look through and understand. The developer is hoping that people will see how easy it is to use Unreal to implement features like leaderboards, in-app purchases, and achievements into games.

Epic shared a list of the Unreal tools that it used for its puzzler:

• Platform services like the aforementioned achievements and leaderboards.
• Gameplay-enhancing features like force-feedback vibrations.
• The user interface that can scale for different sized devices and that studios can update quickly for special events.
• 2D visual elements.
• And performance optimization to ensure the game works well on supported handsets and tablets.

This is a clever way to teach developers about Unreal, since many people learn by deconstructing something that already works. And others will love seeing a visual, live-game demonstration of Unreal in action.