u/MightyBig-Dev

Some of you have seen me building Nelly Jellies, and some of you have seen RareDrop.io, so this one feels like a pretty fun full-circle moment.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to give players more reasons to come back to Nelly Jellies without wrecking what the game is supposed to be: a chill, relax-your-mind game you can open for a few minutes whenever you need a break, or while your agent crushes LOC.

I tried a few ideas for retention but they all killed my vibe.

Until I considered collectables.

The RareDrop.io mashup was obvious. The projects sit beside eaxhother on my desktop.

Now Nelly Jellies has daily card drops. You get a free card the first time you load the game each day, plus 3 simple daily quests for more reveals.

There are 29 cards in the first set, with many more planned, and I’ve been building out a whole little universe behind the lore, it's cute fun.

Its been live for a week on web/android/iOS. I track card opens with my custom ga4 dash, and have seen a stark increase in returning players opening cards. It's working! Graph go up.

If you made it this far you're an OG and I love you 🙏

Here's a little something I wanted to share. This is a custom analytics dashboard I built for Nelly Jellies. GA4 technically had the data, but it was a nuisance to answer the questions I actually cared about especially with all the custom dimensions and flows, its just a bitch to sift through.

Instead I built a local-only analytics dashboard for my game that pulls directly from the GA4 Data API and turns my custom events into game-loop metrics.

The setup is pretty simple:

- The game fires custom GA4 events at important lifecycle points

- Events include platform context: web, Android, iOS

- A local dashboard queries GA4 by date range

- The dashboard groups events into sections I actually care about

- No extra SaaS, no production admin panel, no user-level tracking

The events I track are things like:

- app_open

- game_start

- run_end

- replay

- daily_box_open

- achievement_unlock

- collection_view

- profile_link_tap

- store_cta_impression

- store_cta_open

- store_click

- ad_request

- ad_loaded

- ad_show

- ad_reward

- ad_dismiss

- ad_fail

Then the dashboard turns those into ratios instead of just counts.

For the last 28 days, the useful numbers are:

- 11,392 app opens (mostly reddit driven as you can see the big web spikes)

- 9,720 game starts

- 1,705 run ends

- 527 replays (this stat hurts)

- 195 daily boxes opened

- 2,248 achievements unlocked

- 512 store clicks

- 30.9% replay / run end

- 13.7% ad rewards / starts

- 2.8% store CTA click rate (this metric is brutal)

The important part is that these numbers map directly to decisions.

If app opens are high but game starts are low, the first screen has a problem.

If run ends are high but replays are low, the end-of-run flow needs work.

If daily boxes and collection views are low, the progression layer is probably too hidden.

If store CTA impressions are high but clicks are low, the pitch or timing is wrong.

If ad requests and rewards drift apart, the ad flow is leaking.

The platform split is useful too. Web drives the most volume, but Android and iOS behave differently enough that lumping everything together hides problems.

This ended up being way more useful than checking generic GA4 reports because it is built around the actual loop of the game:

open -> start -> play -> end -> replay / progress / store / ad

I wish I had built this earlier. The hard part was not collecting the data. The hard part was naming events clearly enough that future me could still understand what decision each event was supposed to support. Yes my growth is pathetic. I know. Still, I'm happy to discuss the implementation and my next moves.

I got tired of every “small update” turning into version bumps, patch notes, store metadata, web deploys, Android uploads, TestFlight builds, and one more iOS step I couldn’t even run locally because I don’t own a Mac.

I have a game built with React + Vite + Matter.js + Capacitor. It’s live on web, Android, and iOS.

I was getting worn down by the release chores: version bumps, build numbers, localized patch notes, store metadata, Capacitor syncs, signing, uploads, all the little steps that are easy to mess up and also ridiculously time consuming. Also, I don’t own a Mac, so I thought iOS was out of the question... until....

I wired the repo so Claude can take a normal request like:

“ship the updates since our last version bump, browser, Android, and iOS TestFlight with release notes”

then the Claude code gets to work with a repeatable path:

- bump the right versions/build numbers both in build and in game ui

- create patch notes for every supported language

- run lint/typecheck/build through `npm run verify`

- sync Capacitor after the web build

- build and upload iOS to TestFlight from GitHub Actions on a macOS runner

- build an Android AAB and upload it to Google Play

- push Apple/Google store metadata from repo files

- keep release notes as workflow input instead of hand-copying them around

The most satisfying part is that the game work and the release work now feel like the same conversation. I can ask for a change, get it verified, generate the release notes, and have the web/Android/iOS path ready without fiddling with a pile of one-off publishing steps.

I still have to manully submit for review from the dashboards so I can double-check everything.

How do you guys handle this: do your agents trigger deploys for app stores, or do they prep everything and you manually click though the dashboards?

Game, mostly as proof this is a real project: Nelly Jellies

Hey r/iOSGaming! I just released Nelly Jellies: Bubble Merge on iOS two days ago.

App Store Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nelly-jellies-bubble-merge/id6767261764

It’s basically my love letter to Suika-style merge games, but flipped upside down and made more arcade-y. Instead of dropping fruit from above, you launch little jellyfish from the ocean floor and they float upward into a squishy, bouncy pile at the waterline.

The fun is in the feel: cute jellies bobbing around, satisfying merge pops, cozy music, crisp sound effects, rare jelly spawns, and powerups that can completely change a run. It’s meant to be chill and playful, but still has that “okay, one more try” score-chasing loop.

A few things that make it stand out:

- Reverse Suika-style merging: launch upward instead of dropping down

- Cute physics-driven jellies that bounce, wedge, drift, and merge

- Rare jelly spawns like Ghost, Twin, Bomb, Cork, Spike, and Prism

- Unlockable powerups including Whirlpool, Tsunami, Supernova, Bubble Rush, and Flip

- Rainbow clears, Save/Swap strategy, global leaderboards, and community stats

- Cozy underwater vibes with music and SFX that were a big part of the feel I wanted

I wanted it to feel like an arcade toybox: simple to start, satisfying immediately, and full of little surprise moments when a rare jelly or powerup saves a run.

I’d love feedback from iOS players, especially on the game feel, audio, rare jelly spawns, and if youre able to instantly understand the game without a boring tutorial.

Thanks all! ❤️

finally added persistent saves to Nelly Jellies and it made the whole thing feel way more like a real game.

before this, the game was fun but kind of disposable. you could play a run, close it, and that was it. now progress persists on both android and desktop, so players can come back to their current game instead of starting over every time.

the setup is pretty simple:

• desktop/web uses browser storage
• android uses Capacitor preferences / native persistence
• the game state gets serialized into a clean save object
• on launch, it checks for an existing save and rebuilds the board
• if something breaks or the save is old, it safely falls back to a fresh game

what made it trickier than expected was deciding what actually counts as “game state.” not just score, but the active jelly positions, sizes, special jelly types, current abilities, and enough physics data to recreate the session without it feeling broken.

not the flashiest update, but this is one of those boring features that used to be horribly time consuming with a lot of google searches.. my how times have changed.

web version: https://jelly.mightybig.ca
android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nellyjellies.game

Game Title: Nelly Jellies

Playable Link:
Web: https://jelly.mightybig.ca
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nellyjellies.game

Platform:
Android / Web

Description:
Nelly Jellies started after my daughter got hooked on the watermelon merge game with her grandpa, then told me at swimming that my next project should have jellyfish. That turned into a chill underwater merge game where you launch jellies upward, combine matching ones, use powerups, and try to keep the board under control as everything floats and bumps around. There are rare jelly types, abilities, leaderboards, and a slower cozy feel compared to most arcade puzzle games. The Android version runs best, but the web version is free and works right in the browser.

Free to Play Status:
[x] Free to play

[ ] Demo/Key available

[ ] Paid

Involvement:
I built the game myself, but my 4 year old daughter is the lead designer, main tester, name inspiration, and harshest critic. She helps decide what feels fun, cute, boring, or worth changing.