Going free permanently, and the hardest design call I've had to make

We are in the final stretch of launch week, and I have some news plus an honest look at a decision that took me a while to get right.

Free for good

I made GRAZE free during launch week to get more people playing. The response was better than I expected. More people tried it, the daily leaderboard actually filled up, and the feedback has been genuinely great. Watching the board go from a handful of names to a real fight every morning changed how the game feels.

So I am making it permanent. GRAZE: Edge Rush is free from here on out. No paywall, no in app purchases.

The hard part

Free means it has to support itself somehow, and this is where I got stuck for a while.

The obvious move for an arcade game is a rewarded ad: die, watch a short ad, continue your run. It works, players are used to it, and it is completely optional. But there was a problem I could not get past.

The whole point of GRAZE is that everyone plays the exact same daily course. Same obstacles, same everything, and whoever holds their nerve best wins the day. The moment you can buy a second life with an ad, that stops being true. Today's number one becomes whoever was most willing to watch ads, not whoever was actually best. And the Daily Wins counter, the permanent record I just built, becomes something you can grind rather than earn.

I was not willing to trade that away. The fair daily board is the entire reason the game is worth caring about.

The middle ground

Here is what I landed on, and I am genuinely happy with it.

You can watch one ad per run to continue from where you died. Completely optional, and you never have to watch one to play. But the score split works like this:

• Whatever you scored before the continue still counts for the daily leaderboard. If you had a great run before you died, that run stands on today's board.
• Everything after the continue only counts toward the all time board, never the daily.

So the daily competition stays pure, no continue skill for everyone. Nobody can buy their way to number one today. But if you are chasing your personal best or climbing the all time board, you can keep a great run alive.

Two boards, two different jobs, two different rule sets. It took me a few passes to see it, but once I did it felt obvious.

The rest of the polish

Along the way I also fixed a pile of unglamorous things: scores set with no signal now queue up and post when you reconnect, your best scores and win totals follow your Game Center account so an update or reinstall never wipes them, and the continue resumes with your multiplier intact instead of resetting you to nothing.

Final stretch

Launch week is almost over and GRAZE is still climbing. If you have not voted yet, it takes 10 seconds and one tap, and it genuinely decides how many people find this game. If you already voted, thank you, and the best thing now is sending it to one person who would like it.

It is free, so there is nothing to lose but a few minutes and possibly your composure around x16.

Thank you for a week I did not expect. Go take today's board.