Badge Crane

Catch. Collect. Create. A pocket arcade where every catch becomes a keepsake.
Aim for your next keepsake in Forest Friends. English gameplay screenshot, 1179 x 2556; simulator capture.
Turn collected badges into a personal composition on the Canvas. English screenshot, 1179 x 2556; simulator capture.
Badge Crane app icon — original uncropped 1024 x 1024 artwork.

Catch a badge. Complete an album. Create something yours.

Hold to move the claw, then release to attempt a catch. Each badge you win becomes both a collectible for your themed albums and a piece you can arrange on your own canvas.

Badge Crane is a portrait arcade game for iPhone and iPad, with Japanese and English interfaces. The same prize connects a moment of play with a collection and a creation that belong to the player.

What makes the next play interesting

Choose a badge you want, read its position among the other prizes, and decide when to release the claw. Its movement and contact with the playfield make the outcome part of the experience.

After a regular-machine catch, you can take out your collected badges without using every remaining play. A keepsake card shows the catch and its set progress, then offers a route to decorating. An empty space in an album gives you a collection goal; a composition on the canvas gives you a personal reason to choose your next prize.

On the canvas, place owned badges, drag them into position, and resize them. A badge can complete a set and also become the centerpiece of something you make.

Inspiration and visual design

A small arcade prize can become a keepsake because you chose it, won it, and found a place for it. That feeling inspired the connection between the machine, the badge book, and the canvas.

Red cabinet panels, metallic controls, illustrated prizes, and a turtle shopkeeper give the game a continuous arcade identity. Three moments carry that identity through the experience: the claw moving through the playfield, the keepsake card presenting a catch, and the direct manipulation of badges on the canvas.

Purchase choices for different ways to play

RevenueCat powers two in-app purchases:

Ten plays: a consumable pack for a short arcade visit.
Unlimited Plays: a one-time purchase for unlimited regular-machine play, without a recurring subscription. The separate daily-free mode retains its daily quota.

Both options provide attempts, not guaranteed catches. Prices appear in the player's store currency. A free practice machine teaches the controls before regular plays are spent; practice catches are not saved to the collection.

How we built it, and what we learned

SwiftUI provides the interface and SpriteKit runs gameplay. Firebase Authentication, Firestore, and Cloud Functions support accounts, rewards, and play balances. RevenueCat handles the purchase flow, with backend reconciliation confirming the resulting access.

The hardest lesson was handling interrupted play. Testing exposed a mismatch between saved play reservations and newly published machines. We improved reservation refresh and interrupted-start recovery: the server confirms balances and entitlements, while the device stores approved reservations and pending results. Retries reuse their request identifier to avoid treating one attempt as two.

Recovery is part of the player experience. Our next validation priority is device playtesting of the updated flow, alongside clearer onboarding and collection feedback.

See the complete journey

Watch the demo above, then try a regular machine: aim, catch, take out the prize, open Collection, and place an owned badge on the canvas. The gameplay and canvas screenshots show the two ends of that journey.

Badge Crane first launched on September 23, 2026 and is available on the US App Store. Version 1.0.5 (build 18) is now approved and publicly available, including the latest responsiveness, English-text, recovery, and in-shop Apple offer-code improvements. Download the App Store version using the link below.