Devlog 2 — Turning Barah Gashta Into a Complete Game

The first release of Barah Gashta was mainly about getting the core game working — the board, gameplay, animations, UI, and the basic multiplayer experience.

For the second release, my focus shifted from simply making the game playable to making it feel like a proper online game.

This update added several systems that were missing from the first version:

🔐 Login & Player Profiles

Players can now create an account and have their own identity inside the game.

This also became the foundation for saving player progress and connecting different parts of the game to the same player.

💾 Persistence

One of the biggest additions in this release was persistent player data.

Instead of everything being reset when the player leaves the game, important information can now be stored and restored across sessions.

🏆 Leaderboards

I also added leaderboards to give players something to compete for beyond individual matches.

It was interesting working on the complete flow — from storing scores to retrieving and displaying rankings inside the game.

💰 Ads & Monetization

This release also introduced ads into Barah Gashta.

Adding monetization wasn't just about placing an ad inside the game. I had to think about where ads should appear without making the gameplay experience frustrating or intrusive.

🌐 Improving the Online Experience

With login, persistence, and leaderboards now connected, the game started feeling less like a standalone prototype and more like an actual online multiplayer game.

There are still plenty of things I want to improve, but this release was an important step forward.

What I learned from this release

The first version taught me how to build the game.

This version taught me how much work goes into building the systems around the game.

Things like authentication, databases, persistent data, leaderboards, monetization, and handling player state may not be visible when you're playing — but they become a huge part of development once you move beyond a simple prototype.

What's next?

I'm continuing to improve Barah Gashta based on testing and player feedback.

There are still many things on my list — gameplay improvements, polish, better multiplayer experiences, more progression systems, and of course, fixing all the little problems that appear once real players start using the game.

This is only the second release, and I'm excited to see where I can take it from here.

Barah Gashta is still a work in progress. 🚀