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So, where are we in the journey to the App Store and submission to Shipaton?
In my last checkup, I was waiting for Apple to decide whether the game I'd spent weeks building was worthy of entering the App Store. Very dramatic.
In my previous article, I Built the Game. Now I Need to Find Out If Anyone Wants It, I had reached an awkward stage of the project. Adversary was built. But it wasn’t released.
That meant I was ready to start answering the question I actually cared about — whether anyone wanted to play it — while simultaneously being unable to put the app in front of anyone. Fortunately, that part has changed.
Adversary is now officially live on the App Store. That sentence feels surprisingly good to write.
For anyone joining this series at the very end, Adversary is a memory matching game with a twist: somewhere among the cards is a hidden Danger card. You want to find the matching pairs. You do not want to find Danger. That’s more or less the entire idea that started this project.
Getting the app approved was mostly a relief. It was no longer an Xcode project, a TestFlight build, a prototype, a foam board, or something I was explaining to people. It was an app.
More importantly for Shipaton, I now had a released build that I could actually submit. That was the good news.
There have been a small number of downloads, and one person has bought the in-app purchase. I am genuinely happy that somebody did. There just isn’t enough information yet.
In the previous article, I wrote about how 10 downloads and 1,000 downloads are completely different problems. I am still very much dealing with the first one.
When the number of people downloading the game is still tiny, I cannot draw many conclusions about what happens after the download. Maybe people aren’t seeing Adversary. Maybe I’m presenting it badly. Maybe the positioning is wrong. Maybe the game doesn’t look interesting enough. Maybe it actually isn’t interesting enough. All of those possibilities are still sitting on the table.
Releasing something can feel like the finish line when you have spent weeks trying to get it released. For the product, it really isn’t.
Apple’s review process had already kept me waiting for roughly two weeks. Shipaton wasn’t getting any longer, so sitting around watching App Store Connect didn’t seem like the most productive use of what was left.
I decided to start building the Android version. And, to be fair, building the Android version itself was not the biggest problem. Publishing it was.
To move toward production access on Google Play, I needed to get 12 people into a testing group and keep them there for 14 days. When those days passed, Google said the app needed more testing. Which meant another testing period of 14 days.
I built an Android version while waiting for Apple, only to end up waiting for Google instead. There is something pleasingly symmetrical about that.
Unfortunately, the extra testing period means the Android version won’t be publicly released before the Shipaton deadline.
There was another thing I had wanted to try before Shipaton ended. A while ago, I built a physical version of Adversary. Real cards. A real board. Something I could put in front of someone instead of handing them a phone and giving them a speech about my game.
So I took it out in public. This was partly an experiment in seeing whether the basic idea still made sense when I wasn’t looking at it from the perspective of the person who had spent months thinking about it.
Getting the physical version in front of strangers was useful. People could understand the general mechanic fairly quickly. Some showed genuine interest, and a few asked where they could play it.
Still, I want to be careful about what I take away from this. A handful of people showing interest in a physical game is not product-market fit. It doesn’t prove retention. It doesn’t prove people will pay for it. It doesn’t even prove those same people will still care about it tomorrow.
What it did give me was a much smaller and more useful signal: The basic mechanic could be understood.
And after spending so much time building the project from inside my own head, having a stranger understand the concept and then ask where they could play it felt meaningful.
This is probably the part of building in public that I find most difficult to write about accurately. When something good happens, there is a temptation to turn it into a bigger story.
Someone buys the in-app purchase. Validation! A stranger likes the physical game. Amazing! A few people download it. Traction! Those words make everything sound much tidier than it actually is.
At this scale, I don’t think I have validation. I have signals. They are encouraging signals, but they are not answers.
Which brings me back to Shipaton. At this point, I’m not trying to squeeze another major feature into the game. The job now is to make sure everything is ready and then actually submit it.
I still don’t know whether Adversary is something people will want to play. That question is still very much open.
At the beginning of Shipaton, Adversary was just an idea: a memory matching game where one hidden card could ruin everything. Now it is an actual app that another person can download and play.
That doesn’t answer whether I built something people want. But it does answer whether I could take the idea and turn it into something real.
Now there’s just one thing left to do: Submit it.
In my last checkup, I was waiting for Apple to decide whether the game I'd spent weeks building was worthy of entering the App Store. Very dramatic.
In my previous article, I Built the Game. Now I Need to Find Out If Anyone Wants It, I had reached an awkward stage of the project. Adversary was built. But it wasn’t released.
That meant I was ready to start answering the question I actually cared about — whether anyone wanted to play it — while simultaneously being unable to put the app in front of anyone. Fortunately, that part has changed.
Apple Finally Let Me Through
Adversary is now officially live on the App Store. That sentence feels surprisingly good to write.
For anyone joining this series at the very end, Adversary is a memory matching game with a twist: somewhere among the cards is a hidden Danger card. You want to find the matching pairs. You do not want to find Danger. That’s more or less the entire idea that started this project.
Getting the app approved was mostly a relief. It was no longer an Xcode project, a TestFlight build, a prototype, a foam board, or something I was explaining to people. It was an app.
More importantly for Shipaton, I now had a released build that I could actually submit. That was the good news.
But Being on the App Store Does Not Create Players
There have been a small number of downloads, and one person has bought the in-app purchase. I am genuinely happy that somebody did. There just isn’t enough information yet.
In the previous article, I wrote about how 10 downloads and 1,000 downloads are completely different problems. I am still very much dealing with the first one.
When the number of people downloading the game is still tiny, I cannot draw many conclusions about what happens after the download. Maybe people aren’t seeing Adversary. Maybe I’m presenting it badly. Maybe the positioning is wrong. Maybe the game doesn’t look interesting enough. Maybe it actually isn’t interesting enough. All of those possibilities are still sitting on the table.
Releasing something can feel like the finish line when you have spent weeks trying to get it released. For the product, it really isn’t.
Now for the Bad News
Apple’s review process had already kept me waiting for roughly two weeks. Shipaton wasn’t getting any longer, so sitting around watching App Store Connect didn’t seem like the most productive use of what was left.
I decided to start building the Android version. And, to be fair, building the Android version itself was not the biggest problem. Publishing it was.
To move toward production access on Google Play, I needed to get 12 people into a testing group and keep them there for 14 days. When those days passed, Google said the app needed more testing. Which meant another testing period of 14 days.
I built an Android version while waiting for Apple, only to end up waiting for Google instead. There is something pleasingly symmetrical about that.
Unfortunately, the extra testing period means the Android version won’t be publicly released before the Shipaton deadline.
Taking Adversary Outside
There was another thing I had wanted to try before Shipaton ended. A while ago, I built a physical version of Adversary. Real cards. A real board. Something I could put in front of someone instead of handing them a phone and giving them a speech about my game.
So I took it out in public. This was partly an experiment in seeing whether the basic idea still made sense when I wasn’t looking at it from the perspective of the person who had spent months thinking about it.
Getting the physical version in front of strangers was useful. People could understand the general mechanic fairly quickly. Some showed genuine interest, and a few asked where they could play it.
Still, I want to be careful about what I take away from this. A handful of people showing interest in a physical game is not product-market fit. It doesn’t prove retention. It doesn’t prove people will pay for it. It doesn’t even prove those same people will still care about it tomorrow.
What it did give me was a much smaller and more useful signal: The basic mechanic could be understood.
And after spending so much time building the project from inside my own head, having a stranger understand the concept and then ask where they could play it felt meaningful.
The Signals Are Still Very Small
This is probably the part of building in public that I find most difficult to write about accurately. When something good happens, there is a temptation to turn it into a bigger story.
Someone buys the in-app purchase. Validation! A stranger likes the physical game. Amazing! A few people download it. Traction! Those words make everything sound much tidier than it actually is.
At this scale, I don’t think I have validation. I have signals. They are encouraging signals, but they are not answers.
The Finish Line
Which brings me back to Shipaton. At this point, I’m not trying to squeeze another major feature into the game. The job now is to make sure everything is ready and then actually submit it.
I still don’t know whether Adversary is something people will want to play. That question is still very much open.
At the beginning of Shipaton, Adversary was just an idea: a memory matching game where one hidden card could ruin everything. Now it is an actual app that another person can download and play.
That doesn’t answer whether I built something people want. But it does answer whether I could take the idea and turn it into something real.
Now there’s just one thing left to do: Submit it.