Oleksandr

Building indie mobile apps.
Sharing work-related thoughts and observations.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Working on Sporehold, and the game is slowly growing its own world and lore.

As an experiment, I turned a piece of the Purple Plague story into a comic 😅

Probably won’t be in the final game, but I like it as extra art for the world 👀

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Sporehold is slowly becoming more than just a battle system 🍄

Added a character library with stats, abilities, and a bit of lore for each hero.

The world is finally starting to come together.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

The UI is slowly becoming more than just a list 😅

Put together the map selection screen for Sporehold. For now, I’m only working on the first chapter — the rest are placeholders to preview the future structure.

But visually, it already feels so much better.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Expectation: “I build apps. How hard can making a game be?”

Reality: The programming language is basically the only familiar part. Everything else is a whole different world.

Deadlines: completely destroyed 😅
Flame + Flutter for game dev: absolutely loving it.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

App review went through suspiciously fast.

Saturday evening. Reviewer was probably rushing to a party 😅

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Younger devs barely touch Stack Overflow anymore. Dev is turning into dry code generation ☠️

We used to argue for hours: tabs vs spaces, Vim vs IDE, and the eternal "duplicate of a 2011 question."

Miss those debates, or does AI cover it now?

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

https://t.co/mwnbiuTh1p

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Watched Adam Lyttle's video on the state of indie development.

His take: the indie dream is dead. AI devalued code, stores are flooded with clones, no ad budget means no chance.

My take: the easy days died, not the opportunity.

Seen it? Real end, or just new rules?

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

+$215 from last month.

Progress. A bit more and I'll be able to pay for both Claude and Codex 😅

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Back from vacation. Deliberately left the laptop at home and didn't open RevenueCat or App Store Connect once.

Turns out when you stop looking at your apps every day, you come back seeing them differently. You notice things that used to feel normal.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

One year since SensePad launched.

Started as a small utility to check PS5 controller buttons. Now — vibration tests, stick drift detection, trigger and LED checks, and two mini-games.

31.2K downloads in a year. No ads, all organic.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

App review: 10 minutes. Reviewer clearly decided I'd suffered enough with past rejections 😅

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Feels like most mobile app ideas have already been done in some form.

Thinking about games instead. But curious if it's the same there big studios dominating, hard to come up with something new?

Anyone tried solo game dev?What did you build with, and did it actually make money?

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Another Apple payout landed: $388.

Last month was $397, so technically I’m down $9.
Sounds sad until you remember that last month was up $218 from the month before.
So my official position: not declining, just consolidating.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Anyone used In-App Events in the App Store?

Curious whether they actually move the needle for small indie apps, or if it's mostly a big game/service thing.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

@StevBuilds Still betting on OpenAI.
They may not always be first, but they keep shipping fast enough to stay in the race.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Used Firebase for analytics for a long time. Are there good free alternatives for iOS apps?

What are you using?

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

@adamlyttleapps That’s a powerful story.

Thank you for being honest about it.

A lot of people probably needed to read this today.

Glad you’re still here.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

Looked into how iOS review prompts work.

3 times per year max. iOS controls whether it shows.

Trigger it at launch - one chance gone.

[Oleksandr @pchela_man]

You have $1000 for app marketing.
Where do you put it first and why?