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Loopi Game

⚡IN PROGRESS
#gamedev

Loopi Game

Lifelong gamer wanting to understand the other side

📅 October 2025

⚡ IN PROGRESS

I've been a gamer my whole life. From Mario Kart in childhood to Valorant, Football Manager and Counter now. I've spent countless hours on Starcraft, Age of Empires, . I've built empires in Clash of Clans and Clash Royale. And most importantly: since I was little, my parents and I have shared a passion for logic games - Tetris, Sudokus, puzzles of all kinds.

I've always played games and at almost 30 years old I still do. With Loopi, this is my first attempt (but not my last) to cross to the other side. From player to creator. And the question that made me take the leap was simple: How hard is it really to create a game with the tools we have today?

What is Loopi?

A daily puzzle where you connect numbers from 1 to 9 in sequential order, tracing a continuous path on a grid. Same puzzle for everyone globally each day. You compete against the clock and share your time.

Think of it as Tetris meets Wordle meets Sudoku - the immediate satisfaction of solving something with your hands, Wordle's daily ritual, and that "one more" addiction that all good puzzles have.

The Experiment's Objectives

This project was born with four clear intentions:

1. Take a game from idea to reality

As a gamer, I've always had that thought of "I could make something like this" when playing something especially good. This time I wanted to test it. Can I really? Or is it just a player's illusion?

2. Create something I would want to play every day

I play Wordle religiously. I used to play LinkedIn's Zip until I got tired of them owning my daily ritual. I wanted something that combined:

  • The tactile satisfaction of logic games I played with my parents
  • The daily ritual that hooks you like Wordle
  • The social competition of comparing times like we did with Clash Royale

3. Understand what makes "Wordle" so special

When I talk about "Wordle", I don't just mean the word game. I mean the format:

  • One chance per day: You can't binge, you have to come back tomorrow
  • Same global puzzle: Everyone plays the same thing, generating shared conversations
  • Spoiler-free sharing: You can show off your result without ruining the game for others
  • Simple but satisfying: 2 minutes of gameplay, hours thinking about it

I wanted to apply this formula to a visual puzzle. See if the magic was replicable.

4. Launch it and see what happens

Create something imperfect for the internet. See if it hooks other people. Learn from real feedback, not imaginary. And above all: learn, learn, and learn again.

The Role of AI: My Development Co-Pilot

I threw ideas at it and the AI (in this case Claude) helped me with all the development. It's not that AI does the work for you. It's that it reduces the fear of starting. It turns "this is impossible for me" into "this is challenging but feasible".

The Technical Challenges

1. Generate Good Puzzles

The real challenge wasn't drawing circles and lines on a canvas. It was creating an algorithm that:

  • Places numbers in interesting ways
  • Guarantees there's a valid solution
  • Isn't trivial or impossible
  • Feels different each day

This forced me to understand pathfinding, basic graph theory, and game balancing. More useful than any theoretical tutorial.

2. Mobile vs Desktop

Making it feel just as good with touch as with mouse was surprisingly complex. Fingers aren't as precise as cursors, and that changes the entire interaction design.

3. Design For Shareability

Studying Wordle from the creator's side is revealing. Every feature is calculated to maximize sharing:

  • FOMO (you can only play today)
  • Social proof (percentiles)
  • Minimal friction to share
  • Results that generate conversations

Implementing this consciously was a crash course in growth design.

What I Learned

As a Gamer:

  • The magic of good games is 10% mechanics, 90% game feel
  • What seems simple (Tetris, Wordle) is the result of thousands of micro-decisions
  • The best games are perfectly calibrated dopamine loops

As a Developer:

  • You can build anything you use, you just need to dedicate the time
  • AI doesn't replace learning, it accelerates it dramatically
  • Start ugly is the only way to finish something
  • Imperfect code that exists > perfect code that doesn't

As a Product:

  • Ideas are cheap, execution is everything
  • Daily engagement is more valuable than infinite addiction
  • Virality is designed, it doesn't happen by luck

What's the future of Loopi?

For now, share it on the internet beyond my friends and keep perfecting it. Off the top of my head:

  • Attract players
  • Create content on TikTok and see what happens
  • Improve mechanics and difficulty
  • Document the entire process
  • English version? Who knows :)

Stay tuned, Antúnez... we'll keep reporting on Loopi! 🔥

Link to play Loopi: https://loopi-game.vercel.app/

Loopi Game Screenshot