This was my first attempt at an app once Apple had launched the iMessages extension API. I wanted to try something simple and straightforward, a friend of mine had just bought me a book full of dice game rules, so I found one I liked and got to work.
Since I’m clearly not a designer I got a lot icons from The Noun Project and purchased sound effects, and tried to keep the style overall very simple. It’s definitely that, simple. I’m not 100% sure I like the look of the game but I don’t hate it, so I got that going for me which is nice I guess.
My struggle with this game was explaining the rules in a way that anyone could understand. I could barely explain the rules to the game in person, so eventually I just typed a wall of text and gave up. My other struggle was how to properly implement an asynchronous turn-based game within the confines of the iMessage model: basically just passing a plain text URL back and forth full of all of the game’s state information.
This one was a great learning experience and I still fire it up and play every now and again with a family member, because those are the only people who ever downloaded it (aside from several hundred “people” in China for some reason).
