Update 19 March 2017: The iOS app will soon disappear from the app store, since it is not commercially viable. However, I developed a simple online version. I describe the development in this post.
The App
Who of Us is an app I build a couple of years ago. Inspired by a card game, I set out to build a digital and better version of it. The whole app development was a great learning process for me. I hit many walls, but could mostly avoid to hit the same wall twice (I guess that’s what you call learning). The design is very basic, so is the functionality. It’s more of a prototype version that needs to be designed and developed further. Also, I brainstormed all these cards together and translated them (app is available in German & English).
Get it here: Who Of Us by Simon Geldner (this link deprecated)
The rules
You need to gather some friends, maybe some wine or other drinks; then you read out a question, e.g. “Who of us is the laziest?”. You give everybody time to think about a person to choose. Then you count down 3, 2, 1 and everybody points at the person he choose (to the best of his knowledge) – certainly you can point at yourself. The chosen one is allowed to defend him- or herself (if he wants to try). Unless the group accepts the defence, the chosen one has to take a sip.
- The game includes more than 400 cards
- There are various packs (standard, girls-only, guys-only, adults only
- Exclude cards you don’t like
- Favor cards you like
What I had planned for V2.0, V3.0… (but never implemented)
- Improved Design
- Move database online and fetch changes automatically (currently local DB)
- User ratings of questions (like, dislike) are uploaded to the database. This insight is used to influence, which questions are displayed
- …
Financial outcome
Besides all learnings, what happened on the financial site wasn’t great. Not that I expected to make huge returns on it, but I wasn’t even able to sustain my iTunes Developer account, which is $99 annually.
The app has now been in the app store for three years. Overall, the app was downloaded 2.400 times. The In-App purchases for more cards make a total of $57, from which apple forwarded $34 to my bank account. Meanwhile I transferred $297 to Apple for my dev account…
One nice thing I want to add
It wasn’t only friends who bought my app, but I had several international purchases and one day I received an email from a user with suggestions for improvements for the app and plenty of ideas for new cards. Thank you 🙂