Icing Addict - How I built it
I launched my first product! What is it and why did I build it?
I’ve been building my new game Icing Addict over the past month and it’s now live!
The Backstory
Ever seen these types of videos? They’re quite fun to watch and get pretty popular. This is essentially the concept of my game, but the reason I made the game is quite unexpected.
Last year I was midway through a year long journey in Mexico. I was travelling by bus in the southern Mexico and had 10 hours to kill - I decided to get coding. I was trying to create an algorithm to smooth lines and ended up animating it by accident. The result felt like I was drawing with something sticky. It felt like icing a cookie! I immediately thought of those gifs and figured it’d make a fun game.
Cut back to 2 months ago when I was placed under quarantine in Guatemala as a precautionary measure. I suddenly had more time for projects and decided to make something. Now if people were stuck inside they’d want to kill time right? I though perhaps that icing idea would be cool. Well I spent the past month making it, and it’s finally here!
The App
What’s it built with?
Sugar, ice, and everything nice! Nah actually it’s built using Flutter. There’s an SQLite DB and a bit of Firestore usage too.
I wanted to learn something new and Flutter always looked promising to me. I wasn’t sure if it would support custom game graphics but in the end it was great. I reckon there’s some cool tech in my game so I’ll be posting more articles on that soon.
Some future topics I’ll write about will be:
- The icing algorithm itself
- How I render the cookies in various colours and for various screen sizes
- How I’m able to calculate the ‘accuracy’ score between the icing and guide lines
- How cool animation is in Flutter
- How I used Firebase to implement a sharing/reward feature
In the end it took the full month to design, develop, and release. I’m a bit of a perfectionist so I kept tweaking it and adding stuff. Overall I’m pretty proud of it. I think it could be more fun but I dig it so far.
Key Features
Here are some of the key features of the app, why I included them, and how I plan to monetise the app overall:
- The game - The game itself is about following the guides with the icing. The closer you are to the guides, the better your score. Like I mentioned though, the icing is sticky. Following the guide lines is an art and takes skill.
- Cookies - Each level is a cookie with a specific theme - like the shapes in the image to the side. Each cookie shape has various challenges. Some have sharp corners, some are more curvy.
- Cookie Packs - Around 10 cookies come with each pack. The game ships with a free starter pack featuring various shapes. Additional packs cost a couple bucks and are themed for different occasions. We just had Easter so the first version ships with 2 Easter themed packs for instance.
- Sharing - I built a sharing feature which rewards users if people download the app with their link. This was built using Firebase Dynamic Links and Firestore. It could be advertised better but hopefully it spreads the word.
- Tutorial - The game features a brief tutorial page explaining key points. What’s cool is each screen has 3 images which cycle around. The images were quick to make but gives it an animation feel without having to spend time making the animation. People have said it’s useful.
- About - I wanted the app to feel more personal. My about page gives some story behind the app and links them to this site. Hopefully I can grow my audience a little.
- Drops - Users can drop on decorations like chocolate or sprinkles. I hope this makes users want to create cookies with the app and share it! You can create some cool designs via the various colours and drops so I’m keen to see people get creative with it.
The Launch
Check out my other post for more info on how I launched it, what happened, and what am I building this month.
