Innovative Apps, Games Shine at Apple Design Awards

Apple hosted its annual Apple Design Awards, celebrating 12 best-in-class apps and games from developers around the globe. Every year, Apple Design Award winners bring bold, creative, and distinctive ideas to life.

Through their brilliance, vision, style, determination, and hard work, the people who design and build these award-winning apps and games inspire not only their peers in the Apple developer community, but everyone at Apple, too.

“This year’s Apple Design Award winners have redefined what we’ve come to expect from a great app experience, and we congratulate them on a well-deserved win,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “The work of these developers embodies the essential role apps and games play in our everyday lives, and serve as perfect examples of our six new award categories.”

Inclusivity

Winners in this category provide a great experience for all by supporting people from a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, and languages.

App: Voice Dream Reader

Developer: Voice Dream LLC (United States)

Voice Dream Reader is a best-in-class text-to-speech app that reads text aloud from just about any digital source, whether it’s a PDF, webpage, or ebook, in more than two dozen languages. Its adaptive features and high level of customizable settings allow anyone to choose a voice with the perfect tone, timbre, accent, and speed for an optimal reading experience.

Apple Design Awards winner for Inclusivity: Voice Dream Reader, by Voice Dream LLC.

Game: “HoloVista”

Developer: Aconite (United States)

HoloVista supports a wide variety of accessibility features, including options for motion control, text sizes, text contrast, sound, and visual effect intensity. Purposeful interactions and considerations help achieve gameplay that can be experienced and perceived in more than one way.

Apple Design Awards winner for Inclusivity: “HoloVista,” by Aconite.
Delight and Fun

Winners in this category provide memorable, engaging, and satisfying experiences that are enhanced by Apple technologies.

Game: “Pok Pok Playroom”

Developer: Pok Pok (Belgium)

“Pok Pok Playroom” is a playful, and beautifully animated app that captivates users with its thoughtful design and mesmerizing interactions. Thanks to its subtle haptics and spot-on sound effects, this app provides endless hours of fun for kids of all ages, while rewarding creativity and experimentation.

Apple Design Awards winner for Delight and Fun: “Pok Pok Playroom,” by Pok Pok.

Game: “Little Orpheus”

Developer: The Chinese Room (United Kingdom)

“Little Orpheus” is an enjoyable platformer that brings easy controls, excellent storytelling, and a console-like experience to a casual game. Throughout its diverse variety of levels, this game packs a clever surprise at every turn while keeping things light with its comical dialogue.

Apple Design Awards winner for Delight and Fun: “Little Orpheus,” by The Chinese Room.

Interaction

Winners in this category deliver intuitive interfaces and effortless controls that are perfectly tailored to their platform.

App: CARROT Weather

Developer: Brian Mueller, Grailr LLC (United States)

CARROT Weather is known for its humorous forecasts and unique visuals. A recent design update has brought simplicity and elegance to its experience across all Apple platforms. From witty weather projections, to a robust set of customizable widgets and a collection of useful watch faces, this app comes packed with endless entertainment.

Apple Design Awards winner for Interaction: CARROT Weather, by Brian Mueller, Grailr LLC.

Game: “Bird Alone”

Developer: George Batchelor (Canada)

“Bird Alone’s” explorative interactions combine gestures, haptics, parallax, and dynamic sound effects that imbue richness into its world. The game is brought to life through clever notification integration, graphics, and music that changes depending on the real-world weather, season, and time of day.

Apple Design Awards winner for Interaction: “Bird Alone,” by George Batchelor.

Social Impact

Winners in this category improve lives in a meaningful way and shine a light on crucial issues.

App: Be My Eyes

Developer: S/I Be My Eyes (Denmark)

Be My Eyes enables people who are blind and low vision to identify objects by pairing them with volunteers from around the world using their camera. The app supports more than 300,000 blind and low-vision users and more than 4.5 million volunteers, across 150+ countries and 180+ languages.

Apple Design Awards winner for Social Impact: Be My Eyes, by S/I Be My Eyes.

Game: “Alba”

Developer: ustwo games (United Kingdom)

With a natural reserve being bulldozed by the city to make a hotel, Alba saves local wildlife, repairs the bridge in the reserve, and cleans up trash around town. This game demonstrates the positivity that comes from respecting the environment, while telling a story about family, community, activism, and kindness. For every copy of the game downloaded, one tree will be planted to help a reforestation project in Madagascar.

Apple Design Awards winner for Social Impact: “Alba,” by ustwo games.

Visuals and Graphics

Winners in this category feature stunning imagery, skillfully drawn interfaces, and high-quality animations that lend to a distinctive and cohesive theme.

App: Loóna

Developer: Loóna Inc (Belarus)

Loóna offers gracefully animated sleepscape sessions that combine relaxing activities, storytelling, and atmospheric sounds. Every aspect of its interface — type, color, animation, and 3D content — has been crafted with precision to create a soothing, calming experience.

Apple Design Awards winner for Visuals and Graphics: Loóna, by Loóna Inc.

Game: “Genshin Impact”

Developer: miHoYo Limited (China)

“Genshin Impact’s” heart-pounding battle scenes and far-reaching landscapes push the visual frontier for mobile gaming. Motion blur, shadow quality, and frame rate can be reconfigured on the fly whether players are obliterating slime monsters, summoning earthquakes, flinging lightning, or guiding the wind itself to supercharge flames and blizzards.

Apple Design Awards winner for Visuals and Graphics: “Genshin

Impact,” by miHoYo Limited.

Innovation

Winners in this category provide a state-of-the-art experience through novel use of Apple technologies that set them apart in their genre.

App: NaadSadhana

Developer: Sandeep Ranade (India)

NaadSadhana is an all-in-one, studio-quality music app that helps musicians of all genres and any expertise perform and publish their music without boundaries. After first finding its tune as an app for practicing Indian classical singing, NaadSadhana has expanded to support seven different genres of music. And with the help of artificial intelligence and Core ML, the app listens as a singer improvises a vocal line, provides instant feedback on the accuracy of notes, and generates a backing track to match, all in real time.
NaadSadhana app displayed on iPhone 12 Pro.

Apple Design Awards winner for Innovation: NaadSadhana, by Sandeep Ranade.

Game: “League of Legends: Wild Rift”

Developer: Riot Games (United States)

“League of Legends: Wild Rift” takes a complex PC game and delivers its full experience on mobile. The team at Riot Games has reimagined this beloved title from the ground up, giving players total immersion in the League of Legends universe through polished touchscreen controls that have been designed specifically for mobile, an auto-targeting system to help newcomers find their footing, mobile-exclusive camera settings, and much more.

“League of Legends: Wild Rift” gameplay displayed on iPhone 12 Pro.
Apple Design Awards winner for Innovation: “League of Legends: Wild Rift,” by Riot Games.

In addition to the prestigious physical Apple Design Award, this year’s winners will receive a prize package that includes hardware for every developer to continue creating great apps and games.