Notes on building a small, calm mobile game — what worked, what did not, and what we are working on next.
Why relaxing games are quietly taking over
15 October 2026 · 6 min read
Competitive mobile games are brilliant at holding attention and terrible at leaving you feeling better. Here is why calm games are growing, and what a "relaxing" game actually has to get right.
We built a 10,000-round game with no game engine
12 October 2026 · 8 min read
No Unity. No Godot. No framework. Just HTML, CSS, JavaScript and a canvas element — plus a few hundred tests to stop us from breaking it. A look at the trade-offs.
Designing a difficulty curve that never spikes
9 October 2026 · 7 min read
Most casual games get harder in steps. We spent a long time making ours get harder in a smooth ramp instead — here is how the speed, spawn rate, target and bomb curves work together.
What is coming next for Candy Mass
7 October 2026 · 4 min read
A short roadmap: better artwork, more languages, a daily challenge, and a proper star rating for every round. Plus what we are deliberately not doing.
Why this game has no backend of its own
22 October 2026 · 7 min read
Sign-in, cloud saves and a global leaderboard, with no server code at all. What Firebase does, what it costs, and the security rule that matters more than the app.
Making a game that works with no internet
21 October 2026 · 6 min read
A service worker lets the game load and play in aeroplane mode. How the three caching strategies work, and the silent bug a stale cache caused.
Testing a mobile game on twenty screen sizes
20 October 2026 · 7 min read
Blurry edges, a canvas that scaled itself into nothing, controls hidden under the gesture bar. The four layout bugs that only appear on hardware you do not own.
A leaderboard that is hard to cheat
18 October 2026 · 6 min read
Client-side games are easy to tamper with. Here are the Firestore rules that block impersonation and score erasure — and an honest list of what they do not stop.
Shipping a browser game to the Play Store
17 October 2026 · 8 min read
How a web game becomes an Android app with Trusted Web Activity, why the address bar sometimes refuses to disappear, and the certificate fingerprint that has to be exactly right.
Five bugs that almost shipped
16 October 2026 · 7 min read
A blank canvas, a purchase that granted itself for free, a game that could not end. Five real bugs, what caused each, and the mistake behind them.
Why the ads in this game are entirely optional
19 October 2026 · 6 min read
Every ad in Candy Mass is opt-in. The three rules behind that, what it costs in revenue, and why a rewarded ad is a transaction rather than an interruption.
Designing an interface that stays calm
14 October 2026 · 6 min read
Dark surfaces, one gold accent, sentence case with full stops, slow motion. The specific rules that keep a relaxing game looking relaxing.
We are a very small studio — small enough that the person writing this code is also the person writing these posts. That means the blog is honest by default: no marketing language, no pretending a feature shipped when it has not.
If you are building a small game yourself, the posts about difficulty curves and testing are the ones most likely to be useful to you. If you are just here to play, everything you need is in the how to play guide.
There is no newsletter — we would rather not collect your email for that. If you want to know when something ships, the fastest way is to watch the game itself, or email us and we will reply.