Dotting: Rock Mandala Dot Art

Turn stones into beautiful works of dot art with this relaxing color-by-number experience inspired by rock painting and mandala designs.

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Inspiration

While waiting around one day, I wandered into a small bookshop to kill some time. My eye was caught by a colorful book about dotting, a relaxing and creative hobby where stones are painted with colorful dots using specialized tools. I had never heard of this hobby before, so I did a few searches on YouTube and discovered several videos with lots of views.

Curious, I searched the app stores for apps dedicated to this hobby, but couldn't find anything that really focused on stone dotting. That's when the idea for a new app was born.

What it does

Dotting: Rock Mandala Dot Art simulates the dotting process, offering a relaxing color-by-number experience inspired by rock painting and mandala art.

No tools or materials are required. No mess to clean up. Just enjoy the hobby wherever you are, with everything you need right at your fingertips.

Each day, you can claim a Stone of the Day. The app also features level-based gameplay, with stone patterns becoming increasingly intricate as you progress.

Completed stones are added to your personal collection and can be repainted using custom colors. You can also disable the numbers in Free Mode, giving you the freedom to create your own designs.

Patterns can be viewed from any angle in 3D mode, while both 2D and 3D modes support rotation and zooming.

To provide endless content and keep things fresh, the app includes a built-in pattern generator that can create unique stone designs. Because the generator is seed-based, any generated pattern can be recreated exactly.

Features

  • Color-by-number stone painting
  • Mandala-inspired dot art
  • Unique stone designs
  • Progressive difficulty levels
  • Creative Free Mode
  • Interactive 2D and 3D views
  • Pinch-to-zoom and rotation controls
  • Stylus-friendly interaction
  • Daily Stone of the Day
  • Personal stone collection
  • Custom color palettes for completed stones
  • Optional music and sound effects

How I built it

Under the name Cellcrowd (https://www.cellcrowd.com), I've been developing and releasing games for years, so building and publishing apps isn't new territory for me.

Most of my previous games were built using Cordova. Since the RevenueCat SDK for Cordova is deprecated, I decided to move to Capacitor for this project.

RevenueCat is used to handle in-app purchases, while AdMob is used for advertising.

This app also seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out Web Awesome, an open-source web components project that I had previously backed through Kickstarter. I'd been wanting to take the UI of my apps to the next level, so this felt like a great opportunity to experiment with it.

As the deadline approached, and following the conversations in the Discord channel, I was a little concerned about the Apple App Store review process and how long it might take.

Fortunately, both the app and its in-app purchase were approved on the first try, within just a few days. The app went live on September 22.

Challenges I ran into

While dotting a stone, users can rapidly tap the screen. This created a potential problem with accidental interactions when an interstitial ad appeared.

To prevent accidental clicks, I added a short loading screen before displaying the actual interstitial ad. This gives the user a moment to stop interacting with the screen before the ad appears.

What I learned

This project was a great opportunity to switch to and experiment with some new frameworks and technologies, and I learned a lot along the way.

I also documented important details such as the compilation process and configuration settings for future releases and updates.

What's next for Dotting: Rock Mandala Dot Art

There are plenty of ideas for future development, including:

  • A supporting website at https://www.dotting.app for SEO and community building
  • An enhanced pattern generator capable of creating even more intricate designs
  • Multiplayer, allowing remote players to dot the same stone in real time
  • The ability to share images of completed artwork
  • The ability to share patterns using codes generated from the seed-based pattern generator

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