Desktop
Steam
The first platform I plan to release the desktop game I am currently building on.
Games
I started on mobile, now I'm moving to desktop
I have been writing games inside my apps for years: point economies, live trivia competitions, location-based game mechanics. Now I am building an independent desktop game and aiming to release it on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
- 4target platforms
- 1desktop game in development
- 4of my apps contain games
- 28+games written inside apps
In development
The desktop game I am working on right now
I am building an independent game for PC. I am working on the game mechanics and the level design; my goal is to release it on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
I am building the game with Unity. Most of the problems I have dealt with for years on mobile show up here too — state management, save systems, performance — but the game loop and level design are new territory for me.
- Unity
- C#
- Game mechanics
- Level design
Desktop games are a new field for me. I know the app store processes on mobile, but the release flow for Steam and Epic is different; I am learning it as I go.
Target platforms
Where I plan to release
I have run the release process on mobile; desktop is the goal ahead of me.
Desktop
Epic Games Store
My second release target for the desktop game.
Mobile
App Store
I know app submission, the review process and the privacy nutrition label side.
Mobile
Google Play
I have run staged rollouts, testing tracks and Data Safety declarations.
So far
Games I wrote inside my apps
I have not released a standalone game yet, but I wrote game mechanics, point economies and competition systems in four of the apps I shipped.
SineKazan
2022
The app contained 28 games: casual ones, prize games built around TV series and films, ones played online and offline, and the live trivia competitions I called Quiz Nights. Points earned from the games could be spent in an in-app virtual store.
- 28 games
- Point economy
- Live trivia
- Virtual store
ArenaX
2023–2025
I brought esports tournaments, prize-winning mini games and live trivia competitions together on a single platform. The real challenge here was not writing the games, but reducing wildly different competition formats to one shared rule for deciding the winner.
- Esports tournaments
- Prize games
- Live trivia
- Token economy
Mysterious Treasure
2023–2025
A location-based treasure hunt with real prizes. Because the mechanics run in the physical world, cheating and concurrency were design problems from day one: spoofed locations, guaranteeing a single winner, and a server-clocked countdown.
- Location-based game
- Anti-cheat
- Single-winner guarantee
- Prize distribution
Social Connect
2023
In-app online and offline games, prize games and live trivia competitions. I worked on keeping the game state synchronised in real time.
- In-app games
- Real-time sync
- Prize games
What I learned on the game side
Writing a game inside an app is different from writing a standalone game, but some problems are shared. Once real prizes are involved, cheating stops being a theoretical topic: spoofed locations, vote manipulation, changing the device clock. I dealt with all of these against real users.
Then there is concurrency: what happens when two people claim the same prize at the same moment, or making sure everyone in a live competition sees the same question at the same time. These are the same problems I will run into on the desktop game.
Solo work
I work the same way on the games I build: design, code and the entire release process on my own.
Let's talk about games
If you would like to talk about game development, in-app game mechanics or app store release processes, feel free to write to me.