Cyber Carrom

Classic Carrom with a neon twist. Master power moves, aim and pocket your way to victory. Customise strikers, boards and effects with purchases powered by RevenueCat.

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Inspiration

Cyber Carrom started with a simple question:

What would Carrom look like if it were designed as a competitive video game today?

I wanted to preserve what makes traditional Carrom satisfying: reading the board, judging an angle, controlling the striker and watching a carefully planned shot disappear into a pocket.

But I also wanted to explore what could happen if those familiar rules existed inside a futuristic arcade world.

That led to the idea behind Cyber Carrom: a mobile game where traditional precision meets spectacular powers, futuristic arenas, competitive play and player customisation.

Our identity grew naturally from that idea:

PLAY • POWER • CONNECT

Play represents the skill and precision of carrom.

Power represents the abilities that allow players to approach familiar shots in completely new ways.

Connect represents competition, friends and the wider community I want to build around the game.

What it does

Cyber Carrom is a futuristic mobile Carrom game combining precision-based board gameplay with arcade powers and cinematic presentation.

Players aim a striker, control shot power, calculate rebounds and pocket their pieces using familiar carrom mechanics.

Cyber mode adds another tactical layer through special abilities.

These include:

  • Mega Strike — unleashes a much more powerful impact.
  • Magnet — influences nearby pieces and creates new shot opportunities.
  • Portal — changes how players think about distance and positioning.
  • Shield — introduces a defensive element to the board.
  • Boomerang — allows the striker to return and potentially create a second impact.

The objective was not simply to make shots more powerful. Each ability is designed to change how the player thinks about the board and create opportunities for memorable moments.

Cyber Carrom also includes player customisation through collectible strikers, 3D boards, pocket effects and other visual cosmetics.

Players can therefore develop both their playing style and their visual identity.

Our premium catalogue is supported by RevenueCat, which manages the entitlement layer connecting purchases to the content a player owns.

How we built it

Cyber Carrom is built in Unity using C#.

The project combines:

  • Physics-based Carrom gameplay
  • Touch aiming and shot-power controls
  • 3D boards and environments
  • Power-move gameplay systems
  • Particle and visual effects
  • Custom mobile UI
  • Player progression and customisation
  • Google Play services and distribution
  • In-app purchases and entitlements

A major focus was making the striker feel physical and predictable. Players need to understand the relationship between aim, power, collisions and rebounds quickly enough for the controls to feel natural on a touchscreen.

Around the gameplay system, I created Cyber Carrom's visual language using dark futuristic environments, electric cyan, vivid magenta, illuminated pockets, energy trails and reactive effects.

The power system required both gameplay logic and presentation. A power needs to change what happens on the board, but the player also needs to immediately understand that something unusual has been activated.

For monetisation, I integrated the RevenueCat Unity SDK with Google Play Billing.

The implementation connects Google Play products to RevenueCat entitlements, retrieves product information and localised pricing, processes purchases and supports purchase restoration.

The premium catalogue currently includes items such as strikers, boards and visual effects, allowing monetisation to grow primarily through player personalisation rather than changing the fundamental rules of the game.

I also use Google Play testing tracks to distribute Android builds and test the store-delivered version on physical devices before wider release.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was finding the right balance between traditional Carrom and Cyber Carrom.

If the powers are too subtle, they feel like cosmetic effects.

If they become too dominant, the precision and strategy that make carrom satisfying can disappear.

I therefore had to design powers around the board rather than allowing the spectacle to overwhelm it.

Visual readability created a similar challenge.

Cyber Carrom uses energy trails, particles, lighting, pocket effects and animated powers, but players still need to clearly see the pieces, aiming direction and result of a collision.

Every effect therefore has to communicate what happened without obscuring the player's next decision.

Another significant challenge was implementing mobile purchases.

A single purchase involves several connected systems: the Unity client, Google Play product configuration, RevenueCat offerings and entitlements, purchase restoration and the player's local game state.

All of those systems need to agree about what the player owns.

Release testing also uncovered a native Android advertising SDK startup issue in an internal testing build.

That was an important reminder that testing inside the Unity development environment is not enough. The actual store-distributed build must also be tested on real hardware.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am proud that Cyber Carrom has developed into more than simply carrom with a futuristic visual theme.

The combination of precision shots, powers, futuristic 3D arenas and collectible customisation gives the game its own identity.

I am particularly proud of the power system.

Abilities such as Boomerang, Portal, Magnet, Shield and Mega Strike can transform an ordinary shot into something unexpected while keeping the physical board at the centre of the experience.

I am also proud of bringing together several very different parts of mobile development inside one project:

  • Gameplay and physics
  • 3D environments
  • Can switch to 2D at anytime
  • Mobile touch controls
  • Visual effects
  • Player progression
  • Customisation
  • In-app purchases
  • RevenueCat entitlements
  • Google Play distribution and testing

Taking Cyber Carrom from an idea and visual concept to a playable mobile product has been a major milestone for the project.

What we learned

One of our biggest lessons was that building a mobile game is much more than building the gameplay.

Gameplay, presentation, monetisation, platform integration and release engineering all become part of the player's experience.

I learned how much seemingly small details matter.

A well-calculated shot can still feel disappointing without satisfying impact feedback.

A spectacular visual effect can actually make gameplay worse if it hides important information.

A correctly implemented purchase can still fail if the store product or entitlement has been configured incorrectly.

I also learned the importance of testing on physical devices and testing the actual build distributed through the store.

Touch behaviour, performance, UI scaling, billing, advertising SDKs and other native functionality do not always behave exactly as they do inside the development environment.

Most importantly, development taught us to keep returning to one question:

Does this make the next shot more fun?

That question has helped us decide which ideas belong in Cyber Carrom and which ones do not.

What's next for Cyber Carrom

I want to continue improving the systems that give players reasons to return.

This includes:

  • Refining power-move balance
  • Improving new-player onboarding
  • Optimising mobile performance
  • Expanding strikers, 3D boards and visual effects
  • Improving competitive multiplayer features
  • Expanding social play
  • Developing more progression and reward systems

I also plan to introduce a Weekly Global League.

Each competition week will run from Tuesday until Monday at 23:59 GMT, allowing players around the world to compete for leaderboard positions.

The Global Top 3 players will receive special prominence on the leaderboard so becoming one of the week's best players feels like a visible achievement rather than simply another statistic.

Longer term, I want Cyber Carrom to become more than a digital recreation of a traditional board game.

I want matches to produce those unexpected moments where a perfectly aimed shot, rebound, power or combination creates something players immediately want to replay and share.

Our goal for Cyber Carrom is:

Easy to understand. Hard to master. Impossible to mistake for another carrom game.

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