Small win, but I made $19 with my gaming app I launched a month ago
Someone encouraged me to post here, and wanted to share a small win. Obviously it's not a lot but it was really exciting to see a lot of people just downloading my game, climbing the leaderboard, and then I got my first sale and it was so exciting! I had some small promos here on reddit but most of it has been organic people searching in the App Store. I changed the keywords a few times, and the title a few times to just try to optimize (Ex. I had put math in the title + keyword first, where it wasn't recommended to do this because it's a waste of a word, so fixed a few things)
The game is called Sumoku, which is kind of similar to Killer Sudoku, except it's only horizontal and vertical cages, where you have to sum up the numbers to the top left corner number.
It's completely free on iOS, you can earn Mochis (points) to use if you lose a life or purchase IAPs.
My tech stack:
- Design:
- Stitch. All designs I made were made in stitch (by google, before Claude design came out. Claude design)
- Figma. I made some adjustments myself once stitch was able to port things over to figma and i edited the components/ built the components myself. Then all app store screenshots made here too
- Gemini. Creating the archetypes, images, Mochi (currency) system, etc.
- Mobbin. Used for references on other app designs
- Coding:
- (Previous) Cursor. Loved the UI of cursor, but eventually moved to Claude to have everything in 1 workspace
- Claude. Now used exclusively for everything.
- Strategy/ PRDs/ Decision/ Tech Docs
- Notion. I have Claude write everything to Notion. I also will sketch things out in Notion like writing up the user stories, strategies, etc. and collab w Claude on my Notion docs
- Data:
- Firebase/ GA4. All analytics hooked up in firebase. Really cool to do funnel analysis, dive into specific users, overall metrics, trends, etc.
- Apple Game Center. I use the Game Center from Apple to hook up the leaderboard, achievements, etc. to make it simple
- Launch:
- TestFlight. Apple's ability to do beta testing before launching on app store
Honestly took ~2 weeks to get the functionality to work, and then of course scope creep and me trying to make it not an ugly UI took a few additional months. It's honestly so crazy how powerful AI is. What probably would've taken me half a year? took just setting aside a few weekends of time to do this
If you're interested in the game it's here too https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sumoku-number-logic-game/id6756796574