Mar 09, 2024

Making of Mobile Application for Board Gamers

Saturday

Your phone goes *chim *chim. New players have just joined your Dungeons and Dragons session. Your request to join the Wingspan game was accepted; the party is now full, and the game will begin tomorrow.

Sunday

The game session is completed. You had an amazing experience; the host knew the rules as claimed, was friendly, and an actual human being. You'd love to continue playing board games with him. Heading to the app, you're greeted with a request for feedback about today's game. Afterward, you head to invite the host to your friends' list.

Could this be the start of a great friendship?

Sadly, but no. You find that he has already blocked you and left feedback that you farted during his game session.

Billion dollar idea

Recall the last time you attempted to host a game night with your friends? The process can be tedious, from deciding on a session date, keeping track of participants, dealing with last-minute dropouts, to updating everyone with crucial information. And what if you fancy meeting new people and engaging in games with strangers?

It gets even trickier.

Imagine you've never delved into the world of board games but are eager to explore this lovely hobby. This becomes particularly challenging if none of your friends are board gamers either. The uncertainty of where to search and what to play can be overwhelming.

While there are similar existing apps, they either come with a price tag or lack essential features for board games. Thus, the concept of creating a tailored app for board gamers was born.

Plan hooligan

Our objective is to develop a mobile application that simplifies the process of organising board games, merging all related aspects into one convenient platform. We've been working on this app for a couple of months, and significant progress has already been made.

The first major step involves completing a beta version of the app, ready for user testing. Some of confirmed features include:

Hosting board games.
Joining games hosted by others.
Seamless search options: nearby, in selected cities, by languages, player experience, etc.
Friend lists.
Feedback system.
Chat.

Personal motivation

Since the times of dinosaurs, I wanted to create something big, bigger than me or anyone (hehehe, take that small people).

It was by accident that I got to this idea. We were playing a Call of Cthulhu roleplay game, and some of us discussed a dungeon master (person who leads Dungeons and Dragons, not the BDSM one) planning a World of Warcraft themed campaign.

Weeks later, I asked if someone had registered for the campaign but learned they had not. It was challenging to locate the game or even the host himself.

It wasn’t at that moment that I knew about how rich I could be by pursuing this. It was actually after I took a couple of nights of good sleep. Later, I was driving around, suddenly the idea hit me. Just the idea itself inspired me so much, I probably got a hit of dopamine like from some cocaine (even though I’ve never done it, I read about the impact of dopamine from the latter).

What could be better then to work on something I love like board games and at the same time provide something great for the community. Well there’s also the thing of patting my own ego for the desire to create gigantic things in life.

Without them - we shall not pass!

I'm extremely grateful for my friends who have joined me on this journey. They helped to bring this idea to life and made the journey together much more joyful.

For all the others who were amazing enough to share their opinions openly, continually ask how the project is moving and your time for testing, suggesting, and other feedback.

This is gameup at the current moment:

Tadas Botyrius - Business and Ideas
Devidas Gruzdzevičius - Developer
Lukas Šitkus - Developer and Designer

What's next

We’ll uncover and lead you through the whole process we take in building this project. I’ll write reports on what we achieved and what we plan on doing next. Following posts about gameup might look something like this:

Uncover the idea, figure out what features it should contain, climb into users shoes, and envision what would be useful for him/her.
With a clear features list in mind, create the first prototype for potential users to try.
Get feedback on the prototype from testers.
Update the prototype.
Start development (hacking mode on).
Rinse and repeat until the beta is complete (rhymes, right?)

Listened to:

Let us know if you love it, hate it, or don't care at all lukas@sitkus.com

Thanks for reading. Peace.