Inspiration

Our inspiration for making TapTap was the world of casual games. We've always loved casual games. The kind you open on your commute, or at a wedding when the speeches run long, and just relax for a few minutes. We were also curious about how well these games do commercially. The mechanics look simple from the outside, but getting them to feel right is a real design problem, and we wanted to try solving it ourselves.

What it does

TapTap is a casual puzzle game. Every tap raises the value of a tile by one, and when enough matching tiles touch each other, they merge. A merge can drop new tiles into place that create another merge, and those chain reactions are where the game gets exciting.

There are four modes right now, with more on the way:

Infinite: Every tap costs a move and every merge earns one back. Keep the combos going and the run never ends.
Classic: You have one minute. Get the highest score you can.
Bullet: Fewer moves and less time. Can you handle it?
Limited: Just 15 moves. Make every tap count.

Each mode puts a different kind of pressure on the player, so the same board feels like a different game depending on what you pick.

How we built it

We built TapTap in Unity so we could ship to both iOS and Android from a single codebase, and because we'd both worked with Unity before. Purchases run through the RevenueCat SDK.

Monetization. TapTap is free with ads, and the only thing we sell is a one-time purchase to remove them. We think that's the right fit for a casual game. Nobody should have to pay to play something you pick up for two minutes in a queue, but players who end up coming back every day can pay once and never see an ad again.

Challenges we ran into

We had two main challenges: the tile generation algorithm and publishing.

Tile generation. Our first version picked each new tile's value completely at random. It was way too easy. The board kept handing out free merges and runs lasted forever. So we rebuilt the spawner so that every time a new tile appears, it looks at what each possible value would give the player and adjusts the odds.

The setup and pair penalties grow as you progress. Difficulty is tied to the highest tile on your board, which can only go up during a run, so the game never gets easier and never punishes someone who's struggling.

The trickiest part was the combo tuning. We ended up splitting it into two separate dials: how often a tap starts a combo, and how far a combo runs once it starts. In playtesting, long chains broke the game, since every cascade gives back a move and runs just never ended. Frequent short combos, on the other hand, felt great. So we doubled the odds of a combo starting and halved the odds of it continuing.

To tune all this we wrote a bot that plays 200 seeded games per configuration and reports survival, score, and combo stats.

Publishing. This was our first time publishing an app. Registering as developers on the App Store and Google Play was more complicated than we expected, since we're based outside the U.S. It was mostly paperwork. Although it took a lot of time, yet we got it done.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We went from an idea to a game on both app stores as first-time publishers. The teamwork and attention to detail that we have shown during the development process managed to impress even ourselves! We split the work equally and each managed to complete their part with utmost excellence.

We're especially proud of the spawn system. It turned a random tile game into one that ramps up with the player and makes combos feel earned.

What we learned

We learned the basics of game design and how small mechanics shape the way a game feels, like how one number in a spawn formula can decide whether a run lasts one minute or never ends. We learned how to integrate ads and in-app purchases with RevenueCat, and we started researching marketing for casual games. Taking something from an idea all the way to a real product in the store taught us more than any tutorial could.

What's next for TapTap

We have already planned new features for the next two releases. The biggest difference is going to be online mode with live leaderboards and friendship invites. While we were testing we realized that it is so fun to try to beat your friends' scores, therefore we decided to build the online mode. We are sure that it's a banger!