52 Apps in 52 Weeks

I recently finished work on Quartiles, an unlimited word game that revolves around spotting hidden words in short segments. The concept sprang from reading reviews of similar apps where people were frustrated about being stuck on a single level. I took that to heart and decided to let players jump around however they like, with 500 levels to choose from. There’s also a best score tracker for every puzzle, and a neat little trophy icon that lights up once you’ve earned 100 points—just a small way to acknowledge your progress.

Since Quartiles has officially made it onto the App Store, I’ve started planning a few extras that might keep folks coming back. Push notifications seem like a logical step, because even if the game’s good, people can forget to open it once life gets busy. I also spent a lot of time building out the dictionary and parsing words into puzzle segments, which turned out to be more work than I’d expected. And of course, there’s the usual step of making sure everything looks good on iPad without weird spacing or scaling issues.

The next steps for Quartiles will mostly revolve around refining what’s already there. I might tweak the scoring, toss in some fun sound effects, and take a closer look at analytics once enough people are playing. But I’m relieved the core version made it through Apple’s approval process without any drama. It’s always nice to see something you’ve created go live, and I’m looking forward to hearing how it resonates with puzzle fans.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quartiles-unlimited-word-game/id6740552582

Jake