Independent project / Playable prototype

Pumps & Pins

A quick-decision inflatable object stacking puzzle. Seven towers or five slots. A limited reserve of pumps and pins to fix stuff and move it along.

Penguins: Cute version.
Pigs: Cute speed version, with ten levels to master.
Rings: Full game, ten rings, 7 poles.

Play the prototype Read the product notes

Rings

Pigs

My role

Product & experience

Game concept, rules, interaction decisions, playtesting, and iteration with AI-assisted implementation.

The format

Short, finite rounds

Build complete towers and track how many you finish. The result is a record you can improve across rounds.

Current focus

Making the rules visible

The core is playable. The visual metaphor is being tested for readability on a small screen.

The product brief: distract me from this flight

So…what problem are we solving? Fear of flying, apparently.

My daughter and I were flying home from Puerto Rico through thunderstorms. I tried playing solitaire on the seat-back screen, then explaining it to her. She wanted nothing to do with it. Boring. Complicated. She handed me her phone to play Fruit Merge.

For a while, sliding and dropping fruit with faces was more compelling than worrying about the plane.

But couldn’t solitaire be fun for her too? Keep the satisfaction of building a run. Add time pressure like Tetris. Specials like Arkanoid. Grotesque little creatures. Explosions. And that feeling when you lose: “I was so close. One more.”

Back home, I started experimenting.

After years of SaaS product management, this was a ridiculously enjoyable problem to work on. I could apply the same craft—work out the rules, build something testable, watch what people understand, adjust—and spend an unreasonable amount of time considering inflatable monsters.

There was even a spreadsheet comparing visual metaphors. Of course there was.

The brief became: make a quick, touch-controlled stacking game with satisfying transformations, meaningful choices, and a reason to try another round. Make the relationships understandable through play. Give it some personality.

Whether it would interest my daughter—or anyone else—was something I’d have to find out.

Decisions behind the prototype

01 / The reason to play again

A round record instead of an endless score

The loop moved away from an unreachable win toward tracking tower completion across rounds: rounds played, average completion, and a distribution from zero to seven. That gives each round an ending and the player a clear result to improve. This just seemed to fit better, but maybe it was the Wordle and Connections bug I had. Or maybe the game play I landed on and liked did not lend itself to that. Not without sneaky probabilities and the resulting frustrations that I did not want to add.

02 / Interaction

Put the action where the player is looking

Tap a tube or slide and release to place a piece. Move the reserve close to the play area. Remove redundant movement and reserve buttons as the direct interaction becomes sufficient. Even with the action, a game of chance. Like solitaire. Like merge games. Like what you get dealt in Tetris. Fine. That’s half the fun. “Next time. If I only got that 2.”

03 / Resource management

Make the reserve a real choice

Saving and deploying special powers creates a second layer of decisions. This ended up being key. Using a reserved special replaces the piece in play; the next drop is a fresh number. Timing matters as much as inventory. I then thought about those damn diamonds you save over time in a lot of these games. Yes. I will have that too. But let’s put that on the back burner, I told myself. MVP that solves 80% of this first world problem...or, as it is, fear of flying. A selfish take.

04 / Visual language

Test a metaphor without changing the game

The numbered version - the raw prototype - established the mechanics. I tested and tweaked, as did willing friends. But how is it going to tell a story? Something else the playing cards miss. A monster version (this after a spreadsheet examining a dozen metaphors) explores inflated and deflated states. This seemed like a good direction. Color, silhouette, and the word “Unblock” were tested for clarity before committing to final artwork.

What I’m finding out

The next step is to test whether players understand the game without an explanation from me. And, of course, find it compelling. These are the questions for the next playtests:

Can a first-time player recognize a gap, a blocked tower, and a completed tower?
Do players discover saving and using specials through the touch interactions?
Does the monster metaphor make the state clearer at phone size?
Do different strategies remain viable, including saving specials for later?
Does the completion record give players a reason to start another round?

These are open evaluation questions, not validated outcomes, and I need quick interviews that cover each one.

What I’m testing next: Pigs and Penguins

While these interviews happen, I get to get even more creative with the game. The smaller penguin and pig versions give the characters room to show some personality. Fewer ranks and lanes change the pace and the decisions, too. For a visual comparison between penguins and pigs, I’ll keep their rules and probabilities the same. The shared rules can still be tweaked as I get more feedback.

Inflatable ring towers - the direction that made the most sense, but also carries the least personality. That’s up my alley. No pun intended. Wait…are we going to try bowling next? No…stop. Just stop…
Inflatable penguins…not enough room to show character personality and emotion—great cues as to how the game works, and satisfying. But I took some early feedback, “Ten is too many,” and reduced it to five ranks and five lanes, with one lane needing a base first. Now we get our penguin faces. Penguins can fly. But so can pigs…
Change the penguins to pigs, give them wings. Now we have a cultural metaphor. For us adults, anyway.
Keep the prototype. Find out if users think they need it. The questions above will tell us.

The importance of sound

Wait…now I can force people to listen to my music? And I get to make silly noises (or find some great ones out there)? I might even be able to slide in an occasional Wilhelm Scream (sorry, I gave it away). THAT was fun. And now we’ve got not only game play flavors but also sounds and volume settings. I’ll have to do penguin and pig specific sounds next.

Try a round

Towers 7 poles · ranks 1–10 Penguins 5 lanes · ranks 1–5 Pigs 5 lanes · ranks 1–5 Prototype The original numbered game