From Prototype to Google Play

Dodge Rush started as a very simple prototype.

The core gameplay hasn't changed dramatically since those early days: move, dodge obstacles, survive and try to beat your score.

What changed was everything around that core.

Over roughly 25 releases, I gradually added character customization, a character shop, unlockable characters, coins, daily challenges, score sharing, advertising, balancing changes, visual improvements and countless small fixes.

The goal was never to turn the game into something complicated. Instead, I wanted to build a simple gameplay loop and then add modern features around it while keeping the experience easy to understand.

Getting from the prototype to a real Google Play release was a completely different challenge, though.

The biggest surprise for me was the amount of work involved in the publishing and testing process.

Google Play required me to go through the closed testing process with 12 testers for 14 days before I could move forward with production.

For a solo developer, getting people to actually install and test your game is a very different challenge from writing code.

Eventually, Dodge Rush was officially released on Google Play on July 27, 2026.

And the story didn't stop at launch.

Since the initial release, I've continued shipping fixes and new features. So the version currently available is already quite different from the original launch version.

I've had around 10 people playing and testing the game so far. Most of the feedback has resulted in aesthetic improvements and functional fixes rather than major gameplay changes.

That's actually something I'm very interested in seeing evolve.

The next step isn't simply adding more features because I can.

I want to understand how real players experience the game, where they struggle, what they enjoy, what makes them come back, and use that information to decide what Dodge Rush should become.

Going from a prototype sitting on my computer to something that anyone can download from Google Play has been one of the most rewarding parts of the project.

Now comes the harder part:

getting people to discover it.