Development Updates

It's January now, so a new year! I thought my app was more far along than it really was. One thing about developing an app is that there are MANY small things that keep popping up and demand to be fixed, my brain suddenly thinks of a new feature or detail the app needs, my perfectionism means I then have to iterate through the details many times until I'm satisfied and then before you know it it's been a month since you thought the app was ready and yet it still isn't ready. Also on top of this there is loads of admin things as the solo dev I have to do all the Privacy Policy, TOS and make sure to complete my app's details completely, and accurately on Apple Connect (Where devs upload their apps). This has been new and a challenge to me so I'm taking it slow. No need to rush. I'd prefer to get it more correct and take longer! Lots of things have also quickly changed in my personal life. I quit my full time job, had Christmas, moved country and so now at least I can fully focus on my app everyday. So progress should be faster now. - kat

I'm really excited to show what I've been working on with the new fish variants and rolling features! I personally love collection systems in games but of course don't like spending loads of money on them. So I've implemented a fully free-to-play variant rolling system where you earn rolls through focus sessions and watching ads. I wanted to add some motivation for users to focus more, at least once a day to maintain their habits! That's why I added a boosted roll feature where the first roll earned each day from a focus session has 2x odds for the rarer fish. I hope everyone can feel motivated to focus more with the goal of customising their fish to fit their aquarium style ：） I am really new to pixel art so my drawings are a little unique, but let's say that gives them charm :P (honestly the cowfish is so weird and I love him/her dearly) For the beta I will only be finishing the Blobfish variants, and the other fish variants will come with time! Hopefully my art will improve as I draw more and more. The animated variants were really challenging but were extremely fun to work out. Aseprite was a great tool to use and I would recommend it to anyone interested in pixel art animation. I want the legendary variants to be special and feel like a real achievement for players to accomplish, so I've hidden them behind a mysterious "?" but once you unlock them you get a special feature in the app (that might strike the right chord *wink*). Finding the right balance for rolling odds and focus time will definitely need real user feedback especially with free and paid user tiers to consider, so I'm counting on beta testers to help me find that sweet spot! I'll be super thankful for anyone who joins and shares their thoughts (and helps me find bugs too) - kat

So I've been making big progress with the app's development to the point where I think the app has all its features now, including supabase cloud saving, improved graph analysis and customisation as well as all the blobfish variants that I will have for beta launch. I have worked out how TestFlight will work and so once I've cleaned up all the edges I'll finally start to advertise the beta launch. But I'm kind of nervous how the app will be received, I always get nervous with things like this and I hope people will like it. - kat

Yesterday I launched the official Blobodoro website hosting on vercel. I do have the blobodoro.com domain and will migrate it when I next can! I'm so excited seeing everything come together but also very nervous as I've never developed an app before so I'm expecting a lot of things to go wrong. I still have a lot to research and do before launching the app to the app store but at the same time I'm so excited I feel impatient. I personally just want to use the app myself already! I am really hoping that others can feel as excited about blobodoro as I am and join the waitlist to get to try to app first in beta and idk I want to give a special beta fish reward to participants as a thank you but still thinking what fish would be special enough. I was thinking giving all beta testers a betta fish was funny, so I'll see whether that sticks. - kat