Shuffleboard Heroes

A native Shuffleboard app for iPhone

A game I have a connection to

Shuffleboard Heroes brings together a lot of the AI skills and engineering I've been developing, but it also comes from a deep love of the game itself.

My marketing startup sublet space from the London Shuffle Club, so I spent a lot of time downstairs after work unwinding with a game of shuffleboard. I've also visited Chicago to look at shuffleboard manufacturing and some of the clubs there. It's a world I really care about.

The shuffleboard apps I found on the App Store felt generic and, to me, poorly designed. I wanted to see if I could build an iPhone game from scratch that looked and felt great to play, with a world of its own.

Building a little world

I wanted colourful characters, different venues and backdrops, and a rich lore around the game. That became the Farwind Islands, where you take a Grand Tour of eight tables, meet the local legends and earn a stamp at each stop.

There are different game modes and collectible puck designs, with progress that gives you reasons to come back and play again. Alongside the Tour, you can return for a Friendly or enter the Island Cup.

I cared about the small details as much as the larger world: the haptics when pucks bump into each other, the sound design, and how everything looks and feels together. I also wanted a welcoming onboarding experience and an interactive guide for people who were new to shuffleboard. Someone should be able to discover the game here, as well as enjoy it if they already know how to play.

Making it with AI

I livestreamed the first four hours of the project on LinkedIn and X, then spent around another eight to twelve hours finishing it and getting it ready for App Store submission.

I used OpenRouter and different image models to create the assets, and worked in Xcode with Codex and Claude to build the app. SwiftUI handles the interface, while SpriteKit handles the table and puck physics. Bringing the artwork, gameplay, sound and interface together was a way to push my AI engineering creatively.

It was a huge amount of fun, and I'm really proud of what I made. The game is prepared for App Store submission, and I'm looking forward to people being able to play it.

Built with: Swift, SwiftUI, SpriteKit, Xcode, Codex, Claude, OpenRouter, image-generation models

Part of the Rolling Waves work archive.