“Apple Announces 2024 App of the Year: Chinese Game Takes Top Honors, First-Time Win for New Device Category
This year’s list announced 17 winners, with annual apps maintaining their significant position, featuring both familiar faces and emerging new forces. The annual games show clear polarization, with distinct contrasts between categories offering users richer and more diverse choices.
More notably, besides these fixed categories, a new device has made its way into the rankings this year, bringing us a completely different application experience.
2024 App Store Award Winners
Apps of the Year
- iPhone App of the Year: Kino ❇️
- iPad App of the Year: Moises
- Mac App of the Year: Adobe Lightroom ❇️
- Apple Watch App of the Year: Lumy ❇️
- Apple TV App of the Year: F1 TV
- Apple Vision Pro App of the Year: What If…? An Immersive Story
Games of the Year
- iPhone Game of the Year: AFK Journey ❇️
- iPad Game of the Year: Squad Busters
- Mac Game of the Year: Thank Goodness You’re Here!
- Apple Arcade Game of the Year: Balatro+
- Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year: THRASHER: Arcade Odyssey
Cultural Impact Winners
- Oko ❇️
- EF Hello ❇️
- DailyArt ❇️
- NYT Games
- The Wreck
- Do You Really Want to Know 2
❇️ As per convention, starred apps are available in mainland China
Professionalism Becomes Apple’s Keyword of the Year
This year, the focus of annual apps again converges on professionalism, exploring more possibilities for smart devices. Meanwhile, generative AI has transcended last year’s trend award for individual applications, integrating into existing apps to make previously complex professional applications more user-friendly and even bringing productivity to more portable devices.
iPhone App of the Year: “Kino”
Kino is a video filming application by Lux Optics studio, specifically designed for cinematic video capture on iPhone.
Kino features a clean, intuitive interface with clear settings for white balance, grid setup, stabilization, and focus. Essential parameters are displayed on screen. Thanks to Apple Log introduced a year ago, providing unprecedented color grading space for iPhone, Kino includes professional color grading presets. Users can preview color effects in real-time while filming or import custom LUTs for personalized effects.
Notably, the Kino development team, Lux Optics, previously won the 2019 App Store Award for Best App with their AI-powered long exposure photography app Spectre Camera and the 2022 Apple Design Award for Best Visual and Graphics with their professional photography app Halide. Earlier this year, they introduced the algorithm-free “Process Zero” mode.
During Halide and Spectre Camera’s development, Lux Optics consisted of just two people – former Apple designer Sebastiaan de With and former Twitter engineer Ben Sandofsky. It wasn’t until 2020 that they welcomed iOS developer Rebecca Slatkin, becoming a three-person team.
It’s no exaggeration to say this studio holds the global record for awards per capita.
iPad App of the Year: “Moises”
While iPhone has become people’s portable camera, iPad has emerged as musicians’ companion with its larger screen.
This year’s iPad App of the Year, Moises, specializes in music production, allowing users to create compelling music on their iPads.
Moises’s main highlight is its incorporation of rapidly advancing AI technology. It can separate vocals and various instruments from any song, generate synchronized metronome tracks, transcribe lyrics, detect and sync chords, adjust audio speed and pitch, detect song keys, support collaborative playlists, set countdowns, create multiple backing tracks, trim and loop music sections, and export high-quality audio mixes and separated tracks, providing a comprehensive solution for music production, practice, and performance.
These features sound complex but actually require just three steps:
- Upload audio or video files; AI separates vocals and instruments while detecting song rhythm and chords
- Modify tracks, remove vocals, control volume, and make other desired changes
- Download modified tracks or custom mixes
Mac App of the Year: “Adobe Lightroom”
While we knew imaging was important, it’s surprising to see Apple recognize Lightroom, a veteran professional color grading software.
As a software giant in the digital imaging era, Adobe’s professionalism is undisputed. Features like curves and HSL bear its influence – in static image post-processing, it’s hard to find more professional color grading software than Lightroom.
This year, Lightroom underwent several updates to embrace AI technological advances, adding features like interference removal, reflection removal, AI noise reduction, lens blur effects, AI masking, and adaptive presets. These transformative photo editing capabilities greatly optimize creative workflows, giving creators more control and pushing the boundaries of static image post-processing.
First launched in 2007 and iterated for nearly two decades, Lightroom’s achievement of this award demonstrates its enduring excellence.
Chinese Games Win Championship, Experience is King
Games have always been a highlight of the App Store Awards. In this year’s annual games list, Chinese games continue to shine, winning iPhone Game of the Year. The “slow-paced” games that emerged last year maintain their position, with Cultural Impact winners “The Wreck” and “Do You Really Want to Know 2” offering slow-paced gaming experiences that immerse players in compelling narratives.
iPhone Game of the Year: “AFK Journey”
This is an open-world idle card RPG combining role-playing, strategic combat, and fantasy narrative elements, exploring the vast world of “Isomia.”
“AFK Journey” boldly adopts a portrait interface with streamlined UI, enabling one-handed operation for a more comfortable experience.
The game features a magical storybook style and provides an open world for players to explore. It offers six different hero races, including Lightbearers, Wilder, Mauler, Graveborn, Celestial, and Hypogean, providing rich character choices and strategic combinations. The core combat gameplay adds elements like formation dimensions and terrain design, offering greater strategic depth where players must consider how to utilize different hero abilities and terrain advantages to achieve victory.
Additionally, the game introduced various strategy-focused modes, such as Honor Arena, where deck building, items, and counter-strategies depend on players’ game understanding and strategy, without progression requirements, providing a fair competitive platform.
As the fourth Chinese game to make the App Store Awards, “AFK Journey” has achieved global commercial success since its Western launch in March 2024, accumulating over 500 million RMB in global revenue, with 180 million RMB in its first month alone.
Behind “AFK Journey” is Lilith Games – a company founded in 2013 that integrates game development and global publishing, dedicated to providing games that exceed players’ expectations. Their other title “Rise of Kingdoms” has consistently ranked high in overseas revenue charts.
Cultural Impact Winners (Selected): “The Wreck” & “Do You Really Want to Know 2”
The Wreck wastes no time with setup – you quickly learn the story of Junon, whose life falls apart at age 36. Her career hits a wall, her private life becomes chaotic, and her relationship with her mother grows distant. When she learns of her mother’s critical condition, she rushes to the hospital to find the situation worse than imagined.
This might be the most crucial day of her life – if she doesn’t change, it could end in a car accident.
Players immersively enter Junon’s day, piecing together her past through memories and changing her life trajectory based on their understanding of her. They unlock new dialogue options and repair relationships, ultimately helping her avoid the accident and make life’s most important choices.
Throughout this journey, we experience sisterly bonds, mother-daughter relationships, grief over others’ passing, and discussions about living with wounds.
In “Do You Really Want to Know 2,” protagonist Nick’s life changes overnight when he’s diagnosed HIV-positive. This sudden diagnosis dramatically impacts his life, forcing him to face new realities, adapt to his situation, find his footing, and accept his new identity.
This game simulates social media interactions through role-playing. Unlike “The Wreck,” players embody Nick, advancing the story through social media posts and interactions, experiencing his emotional journey and how he presents his authentic self in relationships with others.
While last year’s “Unpacking” required subtle interpretation to appreciate its deeper meaning, this year’s Cultural Impact winning games are more direct. They focus on specific individuals – those experiencing extremely difficult circumstances or those viewed as “different” by society.
Although empathy between people always has limitations, Apple hopes these games help players bridge understanding gaps, building a more inclusive, barrier-free world through experience and reflection.
This Year’s New Player: Apple Vision Pro
As Apple’s “product of tomorrow,” Vision Pro represents Apple’s tangible vision for the future. Through the App Store Awards, we might further glimpse Apple’s future plans and designs.
Apple Vision Pro App of the Year: “What If…? An Immersive Story”
This application, created through collaboration between Marvel, ILM Immersive, and Disney+, uses Vision Pro’s ultimate visual experience to transport users into the Marvel universe for an incredible multiverse journey.
“What If…? An Immersive Story” focuses on Marvel’s multiverse theme, where players experience stories across parallel universes, unlock hidden plotlines, fight alongside familiar characters, and even influence story endings.
In this app, players can face-to-face interact with classic Marvel Cinematic Universe characters and experience immersive storylines. Characters not only appear in the player’s environment but also respond dynamically to player actions and reactions.
Through Vision Pro’s advanced tracking features, players can cast spells using gestures and eye movements to engage in intense battles with villains. Each player can customize their combat style according to their habits and strategies, creating unique interactive experiences.
Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year: “THRASHER: Arcade Odyssey”
Honestly, due to unique interaction methods, the boundary between games and applications on Vision Pro is blurring – it’s hard to say “What If…? An Immersive Story” isn’t a game, given that players can freely engage in combat.
However, Apple still awarded the Vision Pro Game of the Year to this newcomer.
THRASHER: Arcade Odyssey is a psychedelic arcade action game offering a stunning arcade action odyssey and sensory audiovisual experience. Players guide a majestic space eel through stunning scenes by waving their arms.
Developed by the artist and composer team behind “Thumper” (famous for combining rhythm and violent aesthetics) and featuring an enchanting original soundtrack by Lightning Bolt bassist Brian Gibson, it showcases spatial audio and haptic feedback for an astonishing sensory experience.
Guided by audio rendering, players use Vision Pro’s interaction methods to make the space eel dive, dash, roll, and defeat final bosses. The game integrates visual, auditory, and interactive elements, taking players from primitive dark abysses to celestial heights for a heart-pounding final battle with a cosmic god-child.
This awards ceremony shows Apple not only encouraging developers to utilize Vision Pro’s hardware features but also actively promoting it as a stage for integrating technology and art, creating a more sensory, immersive, and personalized digital future.
The annual App Store Awards conclude with the announcement of winners. From 45 finalists, these 17 applications stood out. Beyond recognizing developers, Apple uses this to convey its vision and plans for smart devices’ future to all users.
This year, small but beautiful applications and games combining design sense with practicality remain favored, while more professional and productivity-focused tool applications show undeniable strength. Additionally, new form factor devices and artificial intelligence’s strong rise bring fresh possibilities.
Under these three interweaving factors, this list is unprecedentedly rich, outlining a more inclusive and diverse digital ecosystem for smart devices and applications, along with more possibilities for the future.