Cacludoku WHERE ARE YOU

I have started a developer blog, welcome to the first post! I realized yesterday I should have done this six months ago when I started the my project. Because sometimes it’s nice to write about something to help you work through your issues. Or “blockers” as I would have said a couple months ago. As are all blogs, this will largely be a brain dump. This means that you, person reading this, are probably not the target audience for this blog, but you are welcome to stay anyway because I like you. My next post will be about how I discovered Calcudoku in the first place and will be much more interesting than this one.

Here’s where everything is right now:

1. I am working on a game mostly for phones but also on Steam because someone said something on Bluesky and it got me thinking that yeah, Steamdeck is a good place for a puzzle game.

2. The game is called THW’s Calcudoku, because Kenken is copyrighted and there already is another game just called Calcudoku. It’s alright.

3. I love Calcudoku, it’s like Sudoku but for interesting people.

4. The iOS and Steam app stores are live, and builds have been accepted for release on both platforms. This means I could technically push the button and have them go live right now. It’s terrifying. Release date is November 3. I have so, so much more work to do on the game before then. This is also terrifying.

5. Steam has also accepted the demo build, iOS rejected it because, and I did not know this, apps designed primarily to act as sales agents for other apps are not allowed. What this boils down to is that you can’t have the word “demo” anywhere in your app. In related news, I am very excited to announce the “Lite” version of THW’s Calcudoku, coming soon exclusively to iOS.

6. Google Play has rejected all “final” and testing builds beyond the internal one because it couples builds with store pages and it doesn’t like my store description. There’s a post coming about it. It’s almost like they don’t want your store page to be useful at all as a free marketing tool, the way it can be on stores with non-advertising business models like Apple and Steam. It’s all very confusing, I can’t make heads or tails of it. This is unrelated, but did you know that Android sales are minuscule compared to their iOS versions? Weird, right? This has been a preview of the next post.

7. I’m probably not going to bother with the demo version on Android. Steam and iOS demos later this month! I mean one demo and one Lite version later this month!

8. There are EVEN MORE versions of THW’s Calcudoku in the works. But THW, that’s insane, you haven’t sold a single copy yet! How can you be thinking of different versions? Well, I know a secret that you don’t, which is shut up.

9. I have now worked with a real artist, a real writer, and a real influencer, to provide writing, influence, and art respectively. It still turned out well. Very excited to announce these collaborations when the time is right according to my comprehensive multi-platform audience engagement strategy.

So there we are, everyone’s up to date. Tune back in next time for a much more interesting post. In the mean time, like, follo0w, anfc domt forget tio rung that boll.