Every Day... Without Fail 🎮
Every day, every single day, I play these famous daily mini-games —
like my life depends on it.
I don't know what it is, but I'm just obsessed.
Yet my obsession wasn't complete.
I would finish all of them and still find myself looking for more.
Eventually, I reached the impending conclusion:
"Fine, I'll do it myself."
~ Thanos 😭
And that's how The Bouncer started.
The Hardest Part Wasn't Building It
With how advanced AI development tools have become, actually building an app has become much easier.
You can whip up a website or even a game in minutes with tools like Lovable or Claude Code.
But there's a much bigger question:
Should this thing even exist?
An app can be beautifully designed and technically impressive, but if nobody has a reason to use it, what's the point?
So before touching any code, I spent almost an entire day brainstorming with Claude.
And I knew one thing:
I didn't want to make another generic word game.
It had to be something new. Something simple enough to understand, but interesting enough to keep coming back to.
From Brainstorming to... The Bouncer 🕴️
The original idea was pretty simple.
I was inspired partly by a game called Shopkeeper, which a friend's dad had introduced me to.
The basic concept was:
There is a hidden rule. You don't know what it is. Your job is to figure it out.
That's it.
Well... not quite.
After a lot of back-and-forth with Claude, rejecting ideas that were either too boring or just didn't feel right, we finally got somewhere.
Introducing... The Bouncer 🚪
You are the bouncer.
Six words are waiting outside the club.
Your job? Decide whether each one goes:
IN ✅ or OUT ❌
Some words follow the hidden rule. Some don't.
But you don't know what the rule is.
For example, imagine the hidden rule was:
"Words containing the letter A can come in."
You might see:
APPLE → IN ✅
TRAIN → IN ✅
HOUSE → OUT ❌
Now you have to figure out why.
Of course, the real rules are intended to be much more interesting than that 😅
From One Simple Idea to a Full Game 🧠
The original concept was simply: hidden rule → figure it out.
But as I kept thinking about it, the game evolved into something much more structured:
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| 🔢 Clue words | 6 words per puzzle |
| ✅ Words IN | 3 words that follow the rule |
| ❌ Words OUT | 3 words that don't |
| 👆 Mechanic | Swipe IN or OUT |
| 📊 Stats | Track your performance |
| 📅 Daily | A brand new puzzle every day |
The goal wasn't just to make something you could randomly guess your way through.
I wanted the player to actually think.
I Wanted That "OH... I GET IT!" Feeling
I didn't want to make a completely chance-based game.
But I also didn't want to make something so complicated that you needed a PhD to figure out today's rule 😭
Finding that balance is where I think The Bouncer can shine.
I want the player to make calculated guesses, form theories, test them against the words, and slowly narrow down what the rule could be.
One of my favourite games right now is Minute Cryptic, and I wanted The Bouncer to give a somewhat similar feeling.
That progression from:
"What the fuck is this?"
to
"Wait... it might be this..."
to
"OH. I'M RIGHT."
...is exactly what I'm aiming for.
Although that last part rarely happens for me 😢🙏
And there's another challenge.
If a daily game takes 15 minutes to solve, people probably aren't coming back every day.
So finding that sweet spot between too easy and way too difficult is going to be one of my biggest challenges.
This Time, I'm Doing It Myself 💪
I thought it was about time that I built something completely by myself.
For almost every other project I've worked on, I've had some sort of assistance along the way — whether from my mentor, my dad, or, of course, AI.
This time, I wanted to take things into my own hands.
And the fact that this game is so closely connected to something I genuinely do every day makes it even more personal.
Building something you actually care about gives you a completely different kind of motivation.
It's one thing to solve a problem because someone told you to.
It's another thing to think:
"I actually want this to exist."
That's the feeling I had with my Gym Scheduler.
And now I'm getting the same feeling with The Bouncer.
Time to Apply What I've Learned 🚀
The tech stack itself was actually quite familiar:
| Technology | Role |
|---|---|
| ⚛️ React + Vite | Frontend |
| 🎨 Tailwind CSS | Styling |
| 🍃 MongoDB | Database |
| 🌐 Netlify | Deployment |
| 🤖 Claude | AI assistance |
I've worked with most of these before. So this project became a bit of a test:
Can I actually apply everything I've learned so far and build something completely on my own?
There was only one way to find out.
Of Course... I Started With planning.md 📋
Surprise, surprise.
But this time, I tried a slightly different workflow and used pretty much every Claude tool available to me:
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
| 🧠 Claude Desktop | Brainstorming |
| 📋 Claude Cowork | planning.md + build.md |
| 🎨 Claude Design | Visual direction |
| 💻 Claude Code | Implementation |
Yeah... I know.
I'm extremely Claude-sexual at this point 😭
But honestly, I wanted to see how far I could take an entire project using all the different tools available.
The Idea Was Ready. Now Came the Hard Part.
- The concept was locked in.
- The design had a direction.
- The plan was in place.
Everything looked good on paper.
But here's the thing about games — they only truly exist the moment someone plays them.
And getting from a plan to something actually playable?
That's where things got a lot more...tricky. 😅
See you in Part 2. 🚀
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