First, a disclaimer: I got extremely lucky here. The TikTok gods were on my side on this one.

Context

Saw the Gnome v Knight trend was popping back up, and had a bit of a silly idea for a project just to have a battle map where people could place tokens down as a knight or a gnome so there could be an official winner announced.

Tech: React.js, Firebase (Auth/Functions/Realtime Database/App Check), Mapbox.

Idea: Join team Gnome or Knight and claim territory by spending points to place tokens on a world map for each side, or to attack enemy tokens. Simple claim with a multiplyer streak that grows as you concurrently claim to place/attack more.

Vibe: A full love letter to the retro 90's nintendo style UX I personally really like - Pixel text, boxed out components, that kind of retro colour scheme. I have a full "Uh oh the gnome is in another castle!" message for when we have an update rolling out for context.

The result: 7.33 million in-game attacks and placements in one week from 2000 users (some with over 150,000 active tokens), a growing Discord community, and a mobile app on the way from a damn meme xD

The good & bad of virality

I was really proud of what I built in just about 48 hours, it was simple but it worked and was special.

Started posting videos from alt accounts with screen recordings, had some bites, but I said F it and posted from my main account 'thejackblundell' about the project which got over 120k views, 16k likes, and 2k users those next few days.

Hell yes.

Quickly I realized that I hadn't planned properly for this, the data subscriptions to firebase from the map were staggering. People could zoom out a lot, so I had to reduce that. People could place in the same spot endlessly causing major costs when viewing one area too.

Those things combined with 2000 people placing and viewing banners in one spot (Was just centering on Rotterdam initially) meant every new user was a real cost.

Hell no.

Got costs down massively, and started working on making money.

Capitalism

Now, who doesn't like micro-transactions? With Google ads taking me for an absolute ride (and still are) I had no choice but to start making things users could purchase in-game - Created coins as a currency, as well as a full upgrade system - coin packs were invented. We're one week in for context post launch here.

I also created some skins that sold a bit, but I used AI to generate these and realised that wasn't the right move when people reacted badly to that - Which I should've thought about before. Hired artists who are helping me recreate them. Originally I planned to keep using AI as a placeholder for new things until we ramp up the art production, but it was a big deal to people - and actually a couple of players left due to that decision.

Now we're just using artist created skins, assets and more - never any placeholders which ultimately take away the artistic touch from the games. AI dev is a yes. AI art is a no-no. That was a lesson.

I'm still waiting for Google adsense to approve the site, it's killing me and hurting the game lowkey.

Community/Game Growth

The community has been the part that's drove this really, I met a guy called Devin on a TikTok live I decided to run whilst the video was popping off, and he helped me create a Discord.

This is where people have given me bug reports, suggestions - but more than that people are now roleplaying as gnomes and knights, sharing map art and real art, interacting with weekly events, and planning together on their missions against the other team.

It's f***ing awesome. The game itself now is night and day to how it was before, with Claude we have run an event every week with unique features, run happy hours with double mana/ap regularly, and now I' building a mobile app as it's been asked for a lot and I think that'll be the next step

Things have definitely slowed down a little right now, and if i'm honest I am hoping it's not just a trend thing - but if it is it's been so fun and such a learning curve of how to build with ai reliably accoutning for this kinda growth, and showed just how strong AI game dev actually is.

Check the world map if you'd like to: www.gnomesandknights.com/atlas