I don't know if this is present anywhere else, but on the Windows Store, there's both Planetcraft: Block Craft Games and Planet of Cubes Survival Craft. I downloaded them both and they seem to be the exact same games with a couple insignificant differences. So here's my question: are those two games just the exact same game but with a different HUD and menu screens, or is there a reason to download one over the other?
They're pretty much the same game, you can even play on the same server.
This is one of the ways how players end up making alt accounts, next to the Facebook account strategy.
Solverlabs has had a long history of adding duplicates of their two MineCraft-like games; Planet of Cubes, and World of Cubes on the Google Play store under multiple game names, and two company names; Solverlabs LLC, and Playlabs LLC.
Some names for PoC duplicates in the past were; Planet of Cubes, PlanetCraft, Planet Craft, Planet of Cubes: Survival Multiplayer, Planetcraft: Block Craft Games, and YouCraft.
Some names for WoC duplicates in the past were; World of Cubes, WorldCraft, WorldCraft 2, WorldCraft: Survival Craft Exploration, WorldCraft: free MineCraft skin export, WorldCraft: 3D Build Craft, and World of Cubes Craft Survival.
Also not the mention the Premium/paid versions of both PoC and WoC that are also on the Play store that have little difference in gameplay except for the lack of ads, and some in-game microtransaction changes.
I could only speculate that they do this so their games could have significantly more exposure than if it was just PoC and WoC only taking up two spots each (free and premium) on the store, since in the past you would've been able to see both PoC and WoC have up to three duplicate apps each (not including the Premium versions of PoC and WoC) in the Play store, filling up many spots in the Play store with the same games in function, down to even being able to connect to the same servers, as if they could be used for alt accounts.
Either because of Solverlabs bloating up the Play store space with their duplicate apps, or Solverlabs realizing that putting up duplicate apps could back-fire on them in the form of "In-game Coin Farming", either Google or Solverlabs themselves ends up taking down random duplicate apps of their game, which is why sometimes random PoC or WoC apps will just disappear off the face of the Play store at times.
from the developer :
these games are different , but the game server is the same