Outlie: Daily Map Puzzle Game
🌎 Inspiration
Outlie: Daily Map Puzzle Game is a new daily geography puzzle. Try it on the App Store now.
The idea came from the daily puzzle games I already play online with my friends. We all do the same ones every morning and compare our scores. I wanted to create a new game for us to compete over each day 😂🤝.
I love games that have a quick, repeatable format that I can play when I have a spare moment, and that I can easily share with my friends. I also enjoy games that test my knowledge a little, while still being fun and not too difficult.
After thinking about the games we already play, the things I like about each of them, and how I could apply those ideas to a different type of knowledge, the concept for the app was born:
Just the outline of a country, at the wrong angle. Can you name it?
🏆 What it does
Outlie shows you three map shapes a day.
Every day, everyone in the world gets the same three puzzles: an easier-to-identify country, a more challenging country, and a US state. Each map is rotated to an unexpected angle, making a familiar country or state much harder to recognise.
Guess without using any hints to get a full 100 points. Or, lose some points and spend a Compass Token on a hint if you need some extra help.
💰 Monetisation
The three daily puzzles are free for everyone. Monetisation is instead built around optional hints and access to the game's history.
If a player runs out of hints or wants to play the puzzles from a previous day, there are several options.
Players can earn Compass Tokens by watching rewarded ads or purchase them in packs: 10 for $0.99, 30 for $1.99, or 75 for $3.99.
Outlie Pro is $3.99 per month or $19.99 per year, with a one-week free trial on the annual plan. Pro gives unlimited hints, removes ads, unlocks the full archive of previous puzzles, and includes streak insurance for one missed day.
Players can also watch a rewarded video to unlock previous days' puzzles for 24 hours.
There are no banners or interstitials, and nothing interrupts a puzzle. The different options are designed around the way Outlie is played: the core daily game stays free, while players who want more hints, more history, or an ad-free experience have optional ways to pay.
🗺️ How I built it
Native iOS app made with:
- SwiftUI → UI and game experience
- RevenueCat → subscriptions, consumable purchases, and entitlements
- RevenueCat Virtual Currency → Compass Tokens
- RevenueCat Ads + AdMob → rewarded ads
- AdMob Server-Side Verification → verifying rewarded ad rewards before granting tokens
- Google UMP → privacy and advertising consent
- Natural Earth open source GeoJSON → puzzle outlines
- Python → geography data processing and puzzle generation
Rewards are verified server-side through AdMob's server-side verification and then granted through RevenueCat. Because Compass Tokens use RevenueCat Virtual Currency, tokens earned from ads and tokens purchased through the store use the same underlying balance.
🛠 Challenges I ran into
- Finding the right level of difficulty for the game
- When I first shipped the app, it was too hard! I included rivers and lakes too, and most of the countries were too hard to guess. I improved this by focusing the game only on countries and states, and by always showing the region e.g. "Western Asia" which I think made the game achievable and fun.
- Keeping the daily puzzles identical for everyone
- I wanted everyone in different timezones to get exactly the same puzzles at exactly the same time, so people could play and compare scores with their friends. However, I wanted to ship the MVP without building a backend. My solution was to write a simple algorithm in the app that generates the puzzles deterministically from a UTC day number
📍 Accomplishments that I'm proud of
- I'm really proud that my friends have actually started playing the game and now send me their scores every day! It's been really rewarding to see people I know genuinely enjoying something I've built
- I'm also proud of how I've integrated rewarded video ads into the product
- This is the first time I've added advertising to an app, and I wanted to make sure it felt like part of the game rather than an interruption
- Ads are completely optional and are only shown when a player chooses to watch one in exchange for something useful, such as an extra hint or temporary archive access
💡 What I learned
- Enthusiastic friends make the best product testers! A lot of the iterations in the app that shipped after the initial launch came directly from feedback from friends on things that were working well and not working well. Shipping a product that my friends were interested in made getting user feedback so much easier than I have found with other projects
- Finding the right level of difficulty for a game is essential. The puzzles need to be challenging enough to be satisfying, but achievable enough that players want to come back the next day
- RevenueCat Ads made it easy to add rewarded video on top of AdMob
📊 What's next
- Run A/B testing to experiment with Compass Token pricing
- Continue improving the gameplay
- I've been thinking of giving players the option of seeing a "fun fact" hint e.g. this country is double-landlocked, or this country has the largest population in its continent.
- Use social media to reach more players
🙏 Thanks!
Thank you for reading! I hope you get a chance to try it out and enjoy testing your geography knowledge.
Natasha - Developer of Outlie
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