I spent years working on a mobile word game, then never got around to marketing

The story begins at a kitchen table in Stockholm in 2015, playing Scrabble with my flatmate. I tell my friend I want to see if we can come up with a new type of word game

Playing around with the game tiles, after a while I put four of them together in a square, and realise that this could be a good start

At the time, I've recently learned iOS app development watching tutorials on Lynda.com (Simon Allardice is probably still my all-time favourite teacher), so I start developing the first iteration of the game using the newly released Swift and SpriteKit combo. Having a lot of fun, learning as I go

After about a year, I have a functional - but not too beautiful - two player game that works ok for local pass & play games. Only on iOS though. Should have thought about the multi platform thing earlier on...

In 2016 I get my first jobs as an iOS developer, first in a tiny startup at an incubator office in central Stockholm, then at FEO Media, the company behind the huge global success QuizClash. After a few months working on their Swift remake of the original game, I join a new project to create a sequel to QuizClash, using Unity3D. After some time, I ask a friend and colleague on the team – the UI designer – if he'd be keen to work on my game with me as a side project, and he agrees. We start iterating designs, while I start reworking the game from scratch in Unity

After about a year, we have the QuizClash sequel ready for release, but this unfortunately coincides with the company being acquired by a competitor, MAG Interactive, who choose to keep going with the original game. Bad timing, and a year of work wasted. Such is life.

I go off to Vietnam in early 2018 to work on another startup idea. Unfortunately I end up in a health crisis there and that falls through. Once I'm kind of back on my feet again, I decide to refocus on the word game. I'm living off savings and subleasing my apartment in Stockholm, so I can work pretty much full time, and some family and friends have joined as beta testers, some of them becoming quite obsessive players. This is a good phase

After a few more ups and downs, on-periods and off-periods, we finally get around to making a proper release of the game. This year is now 2022. I have some plans for marketing, have even created a tool that I can use to create animated clips of finding interesting words, to post on social media sites. But I can never get myself to do the job of marketing, partly because of a strong aversion to self-promotion and marketing in general, partly life, health and work getting in the way, partly because of laziness, and possibly partly because of some underlying psychological problems that someone else might be better positioned to see than me

Since the release, I've thought of getting around to marketing the game, but still, it's just there. A fully functional, genuinely fun and challenging multiplayer word game, with some unique game mechanics I've not seen elsewhere. Unseen, unloved, gathering virtual dust on the iOS App Store and Google Play

Not sure what triggered me to write this post just now. Maybe I'm hoping for someone to read this, check out the game, and go "That's a great game, I want to help make it big!". Maybe I want to find a new burst of motivation to get started on the marketing that never happened. Maybe I just want some interesting replies from other creators with similar stories

Anyway, the name of the game is Lingo Lords, and you can find it on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. If you want to challenge me at the game, my player name is Henk0. Expect to be beaten, as I've played the game more than literally anyone else. Available game languages right now are English, Swedish and Dutch. If you try it and like it, maybe post your player name here for others to challenge you. If you want to invest or help out with marketing for a percentage of shares, pm me. Consider reviewing it on the app store(s), etc. etc.