u/AffectionateBag8448

I'm a solo dev behind Backgammon Reserve, which I launched on the IOS App Store on July 31st. Wanted to share some honest stats and lessons from the first two weeks.

Stats:

• 105 players
• 21 active yesterday, 55 this week
• 60 human vs human games in the last 7 days
• 89.6% of online games played to completion
• 126 bot games in the past 7 days
• 10 correspondence games in progress right now

Lessons/Thoughts:

• Live matchmaking is rough with a small player pool. Correspondence games (24h per move) now carry most of the online play, so I made that the default suggestion when you hit play.
• Building correspondence games has been one of the best ideas I've had, because it lets me connect with people and play games even while the player count is small. It also gives me the chance to play with users and ask them for feedback.
• People play bots way more than I expected. A lot of people have been installing the game and not even attempting to play against a human.
• Everyone I've encountered in-app has said they're really enjoying the UI and gameplay. The stickiness of the people who have decided to play has been a good sign, but it's a very small sample size so far.
• A lot of people have been connecting with their friends and playing them daily, which has been cool to see.
• I had some trouble with online games taking a while to load on launch. This has been my biggest bug so far, and I'm thankful that's the worst of it. I introduced loading screens and that has made the app feel so much better, but there are still so many minor details that need to be addressed.

I've been one of the first employees at a few startups and have others products I sell online as a side hustle from my full-time job as a Software Engineer in Denver, CO. I know building something like this always takes consistency, and overnight success is extremely rare. I've always worked on business products, and it has been fun to work on something different this time around.

For those interested in trying out my app, know that your feedback will be very much heard in my attempt to build one of the best backgammon apps available. Please comment below if there's anything missing, either from wherever you currently play or from the app I've built.

Game Title: Backgammon Reserve

Playable Link: App Store Link (Free)

Platform: IPhone

Description: I've been building a backgammon app for iPhone and it just launched a week ago. Two online modes: live rated games with a match clock, and daily correspondence games with 24 hours to make a move with up to 10 running at once. There's also pass and play, plus four bot levels for offline. No coins, no ads, nothing to buy, everything's free. The player pool is tiny right now, so daily is the reliable way to get a real opponent.

I've been looking for an app to play backgammon with family and friends for years and couldn't find one that isn't buggy or asking you to buy coins every second.

Free to Play Status:

• [X] Free to play
• [ ] Demo/Key available
• [ ] Paid (Allowed only on Tuesdays with [TT] in the title)

Involvement: Go easy on me, as this is my first iOS app 😁 I'm a full-time software engineer in Denver, CO and wanted something non business related to work on in my free time. I haven't had this much fun building something in forever.

Open to feedback if you have any!

I posted in here about a month ago asking for feedback on my backgammon app. It's now officially live on the App Store and includes many of the updates you requested. Thanks to everyone who gave me kind feedback and suggestions. Please keep the feedback coming, and I'll make sure to incorporate it in future updates.

The iOS App Store download link is in the comments below.

Updates since my last post

What's new in version 1.1.0:

Daily mode: Correspondence games with one move per 24 hours, up to 10 at once. Fully rated, cube enabled, chat included. Get matched from an async seek pool (no need to be online at the same time) or challenge a friend.

Push notifications: Know when your opponent moves, a game starts, or a deadline is 3 hours away. The badge shows how many games are waiting on you.

Confirm your moves: Turns no longer end the instant your last checker lands. Try a play, undo it, and commit by tapping your dice, just like on a real board.

Games tab: Active daily games sit on top with live pip counts and the rating at stake.

The cube shows its stakes: Doubling now displays the exact rating points on the line for every outcome, for both players.

Backgammon was the game in my family growing up. Now everyone's scattered across the country and I wanted to build something to play with them. I love playing chess on chess .com in my free time, and I kept thinking someone must have built the equivalent for backgammon.

They have not. I downloaded basically every backgammon app on the App Store and they're all the same: coin economies, daily reward wheels, dice that feel suspiciously streaky right when you're about to win. The few that weren't gamified had clunky interfaces, dated graphics, and gameplay that just felt off.

So I built it myself. It's called Backgammon Reserve and it's completely free to play.

• Dice are generated server-side with a cryptographic RNG. Neither player can see or influence a roll, and the bots use the exact same dice you do.
• Real ranked play with actual Elo, a chess-style clock (10 min + 12 sec delay), and the doubling cube with proper gammon and backgammon scoring.
• You can challenge friends directly to rated games. This was the whole reason I built it.
• In-game chat, so you can still talk trash across the board like you would in person.
• Four bot levels for when you just want a quiet game, including an expert one that has honestly beaten me more than I'd like to admit.
• Full stats on your profile: a rating graph over time, win/loss, streaks, and where you rank globally. 
• No abandoned-game limbo. If your opponent stops playing, they have about two minutes to make a move before the game is scored as a forfeit and you get the win.

Full honesty: it's new and still in beta, so the ranked player pool is basically non existent. I recommend inviting friends to play with if you want to try an online match. There's a bot fallback if the queue is quiet, and it never swaps a bot in without telling you. iPhone only for now. I mostly want people who actually play this game to try it and tell me what's wrong with it before I release it on the app store.

Right now matches are live, but daily games are coming, chess .com style, where you get a day or three per move. So you'll be able to keep a slow game going with someone in another time zone.

Beta link can be found in the comments!