Amazon has ended their long running free app of the day promotion and replaced it with something new called
Amazon Underground. Here's the announcement message (sorry for any typos, it was an image so I had to type it all in):
Amazon Underground is a new app for your Android phone. It has all of the functionality of our regular Amazon mobile shopping app... plus an exciting addition: over ten thousand dollars in apps, games and in-app items that are actually free.
Many apps and games that are marked as "free" turn out not to be completely free. They use in-app payments to charge you for special items or to unlock features or levels. In Underground, you will find 100% free versions of popular premium titles like Officesuite Professional 8, Goat Simulator and Photosuite 4 and popular titles with in-app purchases like Frozen Free Fall, Star Wars Rebels: Recon Missions, Angry Birds Slingshot Stella, Looney Tunes Dash! and many more. We've made this possible by working out a new business model with app and game developers: we're paying them a certain amount on a per-minute playing basis in exchange for them waiving their normal in-app fees. To be clear, we're the ones picking those per-minute charges so for you it's simply free. Just look for apps and games with an "Actually Free" banner.
Normally you'd go to Google Play to download an app onto your Android phone. But Google's rules don't allow an app that offers apps or games to be included in Google play. So you need to download the Underground app directly from Amazon. (Underground apps and games are automatically available on Fire HD and Fire HDX tablets.)
One last point on this. The Amazon Undergroup app is a long-term program rather than a one-off promotion. Over time we'll continue to invent and add more benefits to Underground. For now enjoy some actually free apps and games!
Thank you for being a customer.
(The Underground team)
There are currently
471 apps included in Amazon Underground.
The idea behind this sounds pretty good, but the execution so far isn't quite there. For example, all the Disney apps included still have in-app purchases. For example,
Frozen Free Fall comes with the following:
Play Frozen Free Fall with UNLIMITED Lives, Daily Reward, plus MORE for free, only through Amazon!
In this Amazon Special Edition, receive Anna and Elsa's Fever dresses for FREE, plus 10 Ice Picks, 15 Snowballs, 10 Snowflakes, and the first levels of all Season and Endless maps FOR FREE ($31.87 value)!
But you'll have to pay for more ice picks/snowballs/snowflakes once you run out. (And they are not cheap.) I was quite disappointed, as mom plays that and she'd have been
thrilled to have the game with free boosters. She'd have even happily started over for that. All this really is, is unlocking seasons, giving you the dresses, a decent starter pack, and turning on infinite lives. It's still not "actually free" as long as you have to pay for boosters. (And there are levels it's nearly impossible to pass without using boosters.)
So I don't know, maybe this will be great in the long run (and it sounds wonderful for the devs, who apparently didn't get paid for the apps given away under the old program), but right now it's not quite what they're claiming it to be.
There are some new games and apps in the list that haven't been given away in the past, and many of those really are completely free without in-app purchases. So be sure to look through the list. Just pay attention to what it actually includes before you download it.