[keini]

About a week ago I released a small handcrafted logic puzzle game on iOS, mostly as an experiment in puzzle design.

So far, a bit over 1,000 people have tried it, with ~350 daily active players, which was more than I expected for a niche logic game without ads or paid promotion.

A few observations that surprised me:

– Handcrafted levels seem to keep engagement higher than I anticipated. Players tend to retry difficult levels multiple times instead of churning. – Difficulty spikes are noticed immediately. Even small inconsistencies in rules cause frustration. – Many players prefer deterministic puzzles with no guessing, even if they are harder.

I originally designed the game as a personal challenge: could I scale a clean, deterministic rule set to thousands of puzzles without procedural generation?

I’m curious how others here think about puzzle difficulty, fairness, and player retention in logic-heavy games.