K Yasser

Design Engineer building with AI.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 1/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

I'm a product designer. Six months ago, I couldn't build an app.

Today, I'm building a game.

It's a party game I'm creating with two friends, and Cursor has basically become our 4th developer.

The idea is simple: I can't stop playing social games at parties. FakeIt, Undercover, and pretty much anything someone pulls out on their phone.

They're always fun, but they always leave me thinking, "I wish this worked differently."

So instead of complaining about it, we're building our own. today I just wanted to say it out loud so I can't back out.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 30/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

thirty days of building this taught me one thing I'll keep.

build for the person who just walked into the room. the tired host, the panicking Blanco, the one phone making its way around the circle. that's who a party game is really for.

online mode's next. but for now, just pass the phone. see you in the next round.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 30/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

last post of the sprint.

I started this because every word game I played while traveling had something I wanted to fix. thirty days later there's a real app, Mafia Party, on both stores, in people's hands, built completely out in the open.

a product designer who learned to ship, two friends who put up with me, Cursor at 2am, and an absurd number of wrongful accusations.

thank you for reading, for playing, for voting people out on pure vibes. the sprint's over, the lying continues. link's in my bio.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 29/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

the 30 day scoreboard, roughly. a Flutter app on both stores in beta, three of us, 53 tests keeping the game rules honest, playtests across a handful of countries, more bugs fixed in public than I'd like to admit, and 60 of these posts (this is 59).

tomorrow's the last one. after that we've got a whole list of new modes we're itching to build. online where everyone's on their own phone, a couple of chaos variants, some team stuff. free, all of it. the sprint ends, the game doesn't.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 29/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

day 29. been thinking about the whole arc.

day one I was a designer who couldn't unsee bad party game UX. day 15 I finally said the name and killed the old one. day 23 we put it in people's hands. and today I'm still here, which honestly was the hardest part.

didn't go viral. don't care that much. built a real thing with two friends and met a bunch of people who care about party games as much as I do. that's the win I wanted.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 28/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

week 4. shipped the beta on both platforms, 72 players showed up, the rewards chest went out, fixed the Android rotation disaster, and confirmed the rematch button is sacred.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 27/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

Mafia Party beta reviews, ranked by how happy they make me:

top tier "my friends hate me now." then "we played six rounds straight." then "the swipe thing is clean." somewhere near the bottom "add Among Us maps" (wrong game, friend). and dead last "too much lying," buddy that's the game.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 26/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

beta folks, what should we build next?

more word packs, a recap after the game that shows who was who, the online mode where everyone's on their own phone, or custom timers and settings?

the roadmap is genuinely getting written from these replies.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 25/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

almost cut the rematch button. thought it was a nice to have.

then the beta numbers came in and people had hit it 200+ times in a single day. turns out "one more round" isn't a feature request, it's the entire soul of a party game.

lesson filed permanently. never make it hard to play again.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 24/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

beta honesty, day two.

a few people hit back during the reveal (my fault or Android muscle memory, probably both). one review said "Blanco is overpowered." they just guessed the word, that's skill not a bug. zero crashes on iPhone, two on Android, we move.

the rematch button got tapped over 200 times though. that number made my whole day.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 24/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

first 24 hours of the Mafia Party beta.

47 downloads, twelve full games actually played, and one bug where rotating your Android phone completely nuked the word screen (sorry to whoever found that mid round).

someone in Dubai sent me a voice note just laughing, didn't even explain why. that made the whole Arabic from day one decision feel worth it.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 23/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

the whole onboarding is three lines.

most of you got a word. some of you didn't. the mafia got a similar one. ask questions, figure out who's off, vote.

that's it. round one teaches the rest better than any tutorial I could write. took a lot of cutting to get it this short.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 22/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

spent today getting beta ready. crash reporting is on (please stay quiet), onboarding is down to three screens and about 60 seconds, and there's a little rewards chest for the first players as a thank you.

link goes out tomorrow. if you've been lurking, tomorrow's the day.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 22/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

week four. beta week. the part where I stop talking and hand it to you to break.

TestFlight for iPhone, open beta for Android. I'd love to get it in front of 100 people who'll be honest with me before random strangers on the store are honest with me in reviews.

and it's free. no ads, no paywall, no "unlock the good words for $2.99." maybe we figure out money later, but right now I just want people playing it more than I want a business model. three of us, a lot of Flutter, and Cursor doing heavy lifting. genuinely nervous about this one.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 20/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

one round from this week lives in my head rent free.

word pair was pizza and burger. the Blanco, with no word at all, confidently described "flat bread with stuff on top," and the table voted out the actual civilian instead. chaos. then the next round that same Blanco guessed the word after getting eliminated and won the whole thing.

people were laughing, someone yelled "one more" for the fifth time, and I just sat there like… yeah. that's it. that's the game.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 19/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

best thing anyone said during a playtest:

"oh this is fake it but I don't have to guard my phone like it's got state secrets on it."

that one sentence is basically the entire reason the game exists. you pass it, you swipe, nobody peeks, you get back to accusing each other. I wrote it on a sticky note.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 18/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

mildly controversial. you don't need everyone on their own phone to make a great party game.

one phone, handled well, safe reveal, clear turns, quick voting, instant rematch, beats a clunky online lobby every time. online is a feature I want. but if the one phone version isn't fun, nothing else matters.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 17/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

3am problem last night. the game couldn't load a word because the wifi dropped for a second and I hadn't handled that at all. so it just sat there loading forever.

the wifi in a guesthouse in Sri Lanka last year taught me more about error states than any course could. building for people who travel means building for wifi that comes and goes. added a proper retry and a real error state. learned that one the embarrassing way.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 16/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

biggest playtest lesson so far, and it's humbling as a designer. nobody reads anything.

not the tooltip, not the little helper text I was so proud of. what worked was one line at the top telling you what to do right now. "pass the phone to Sara." that's it. write for someone three drinks in.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 15/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

first day with a real name and I spent most of it swapping out the old logo. weirdly emotional to delete "Last Clue" from the app.

and yes, I finally booked the domain about an hour before this post. slept better already. sent a build to a few friends across time zones to celebrate. round one the Blanco got voted out immediately, round two a different Blanco guessed the word and stole the whole game, round three we just kept going. good sign.

[K Yasser @UX_Traveller]

Day 14/30 of Building My First Mobile Game 🚀

week 2 in one breath. setup for 3 to 20 players, swipe to reveal so nobody peeks, the Blanco, the question order, English and Arabic, and 53 tests holding it together.

next week. the name, a little rebrand story, and real playtests. 🎭 if you're around for it.