GameCairn

Inspiration

Games are easy to discover and surprisingly easy to forget. They vanish into browser tabs, screenshots, wish lists, group chats, and memory. Traditional backlog tools can solve the filing problem, but often make a hobby feel like project management.

I built GameCairn to make the backlog feel like part of gaming itself: quick to capture, honest about what happened, useful when choosing what to play, and expressive enough to feel personal.

What it does

GameCairn is a gaming bucket list for iPhone. A player can save a game while discovering it, organize it as Want to Play, Playing, Completed, Stuck, Got Bored, or Dropped, and keep the platform, rating, notes, store page, and saved references together.

Library Pulse summarizes the shape of the collection. Cairn Pick chooses one game from the player's own backlog when they do not know what to play next. Squad lets players deliberately share selected game activity with Game Center friends while keeping notes and saved links private.

The same library can become three different rooms: Modern, Arcade, or LAN Party. Each display changes typography, surfaces, controls, status signals, and visual tone while preserving the same information architecture and data.

Modern display and the first 10 games are free. Ranked Mode is a one-time purchase that unlocks unlimited games and every display. There are no ads and no subscription.

How I built it

GameCairn is a native iOS app built in SwiftUI. SwiftData stores the local library and private iCloud data. A Share Extension accepts a URL or text from the iOS share sheet so a discovery can be saved without breaking the moment. Game Center and CloudKit support intentionally shared Squad activity. RevenueCat manages the lifetime Ranked Mode entitlement and restore flow on top of Apple's non-consumable in-app purchase.

The visual system is deliberately data-driven. Modern, Arcade, and LAN Party use the same library model and navigation, but each era supplies its own design tokens, component treatments, status vocabulary, and visual hierarchy. That made it possible to create three coherent experiences without making the app harder to learn.

Challenges

The hardest product challenge was balancing personality with usefulness. A themed interface can be memorable but become tiring or confusing; a conventional tracker can be clear but lose the feeling that motivated the app. I kept the workflow stable across displays and let the expression live in the visual language around it.

The hardest technical challenge was respecting different privacy boundaries. Personal notes and saved references belong to the private library, while Squad activity should exist only when the player explicitly chooses to share a game. Purchase state also had to remain dependable across launches, reinstalls, and Apple's restore flow.

Accomplishments I am proud of

• Saving a game can begin from the place where it was discovered through the iOS share sheet.
• The backlog records honest outcomes—not only completed, but also stuck, bored, or dropped.
• Cairn Pick turns the player's own library into a practical next-play decision without pretending to know more than the data it has.
• Three genuinely different display eras share one understandable workflow.
• Ranked Mode is a simple lifetime unlock rather than another subscription.
• The app is live on the US App Store and ready for judges to try.

What I learned

The most important lesson was that product personality works best when it improves orientation instead of competing with it. Status needs to be readable before it is decorative. Keeping the same navigation and information hierarchy across all three displays lets each room feel distinct without making players relearn the app. A playful backlog can still be calm, private, and honest.

I also learned to treat saving, social sharing, and monetization as trust moments. Each one needs clear feedback and a boundary the player can understand.

What's next

Next I want to learn from real libraries: which discovery sources people save from, where a backlog stops feeling useful, and which signals make Cairn Pick more helpful without turning it into a black-box recommendation system. I also want to deepen Squad around meaningful, player-chosen moments rather than engagement for its own sake.

Built With

• cloudkit
• game-center
• linkpresentation
• revenuecat
• share-extension
• storekit
• swift
• swiftdata
• swiftui