u/endikags

Hi everyone. A few months ago I posted here looking for beta testers for Blip, a game launcher for Android handhelds. Thanks to everyone who tried it. It's now public on Google Play, for anyone. I'm the developer.

What makes it different:

A clean, native interface. Written for Android (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose), not a web view or a port. One row of covers, the game you're on named under it, its own art lighting the backdrop, nothing else. Shelf, grid or list. Every screen is pad-driven, and the legend at the bottom always says what each button does.

Designed for one screen and two. On an AYN Thor or a Retroid Pocket Duo every screen splits by function: the game you're looking at on top, the library under your thumb. Behind a running game the lower panel becomes a companion: session time, brightness and volume, and an app drawer that opens apps below so the game is never covered. On a single-screen device nothing is adapted or missing.

RetroAchievements woven through the app. Progress on the cover, the next story milestone on the shelf, and on the game page the full set with points, rarity, unlock dates, hardcore tags and filters for pending, earned, story and missables. Story progress is the real beaten path, with the missables still ahead counted. Read-only: the earning still happens in your emulator. Games you played on another device under the same account show up in Recents.

Art from several sources, no account needed. libretro thumbnails, PlayMatch, TheGamesDB and IGDB out of the box; your free SteamGridDB key or ScreenScraper account makes it better. Covers, heroes, logos, icons and screenshots in one sweep. Box art keeps each system's real case shape, or the whole library wears uniform posters. Anything wrong you fix from the cover picker.

RomM, in beta. Pair your self-hosted server and its library lands on the shelf beside your local files, with download on demand. You approve the pairing in RomM's web UI, so your password never touches the handheld.

Free. RetroAchievements and RomM unlock with a one-time purchase.

Android 12 or newer. Built and tested on the AYN Thor and the Retroid Pocket; it runs on anything with a controller.

• Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bliplauncher
• Site: https://goblip.co
• Discord: https://discord.gg/M7PFqGc7pz

The screenshots are my own library on a Thor. Happy to answer anything.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to show you something I've been building over the last few months.

Blip is a game launcher for Android (yeah, another one), built around one idea: a clean interface that doesn't distract, so the games take center stage.

I've been using Beacon Launcher for a long time and I love it — the simplicity and the clean interface made it close to perfect for me. But there were a few things I kept missing, so I decided to build them:

• Dual screen. I recently swapped my Retroid for an AYN Thor, and the first thing I missed was a launcher that felt made for it. Blip is designed for both single and dual screen, so on these devices it feels native rather than adapted.
• RetroAchievements. Your progress right there while you browse, on the covers, and the full list on the game's page.
• Themes. Two of them so far, each in light and dark, with more on the way.
• RomM support (still in development) — plugging a RomM server straight into the home shelf.
• More in the future :)

It's still a closed beta and I'm looking for testers. If you'd like to try it and send feedback, email me at beta@goblip.co with the email address on your Play Store account and the device you'd be testing on.

The app itself will stay free forever. Once it's out of beta, a few of the more advanced features will unlock through a one-time in-app purchase to help fund development. During the beta everything is unlocked for everyone, so testers get everything.

More details at https://goblip.co

Thanks for your time!