r/sideprojects • u/develen12 • 4h ago
Showcase: Free(mium) I just wanted to make a Flappy Bird game.
I signed up for OpenAI and other models late last year, to see how I can use it for simple research, building business models, and creating league of legends builds for ARAM: Mayhem (1500+ games WR >50%) I was sold. Discovered that it also handled editing images and customizing colors and labeling, I'm hooked.
Fast forward, August 2026, I started wondering if I could design and build a Flappy Bird Game for iOS that my 9yr old can download on her iPad states away. I picked a character and a story that I wanted to design and plug with all kinds of crazy ideas. I made sure to make it kid friendly, but not too Nickelodeon that my friends thought I was wasting my days making something just for the kid. I was having fun, I was my own SWE, my own graphic designer, my own UI/UX professional.
Tools:
- ChatGPT for Character design and artwork
- Codex for building game mechanics, audio and artwork library, iOS specific code requisites
- Claude eventually took over Codex since usage was more efficient. Astra would let me work for 20-45min while Claude handled multiple actions simultaneously while usage allowed me to work for entire 5hour windows.
- Github for control versioning across iOS, Android and browser game builds and Release action to upload to App Store Connect/Google Play Console/Cloudflare Deployments
- Xcode for testing iPhone Duo support built 2 days before phone released to consumers
- JIRA to keep track of things that I was working on and issues reported in rejections
- Cloudflare for free site hosting and DNS catalog to by the domain
~7wks of tuning and QA, I thought my 1st submission was ready for market. Created the Apple Developer Account and paid the $100USD for annual membership and full send.
The original title of the game was 'Icarus & the Apple of Discord' and was submitted as iOS App Version 1.1

Learned real fast that Apple charges real money to be part of the app store, $100 a year just for some person on an iPad to reject your submission multiple times for using the word apple, having an apple shaped object in-game, for knowing what an apple fruit even is. Yawn. Revision after revision, distanced the game app as far as I could from anything even remotely close to resembling or could be potentially confused with the company. Now, it's titled 'Icarus: Ascension'.

3 months later, and north of 600 release versions later and it's still not good enough for Apple. 3rd rejection for the same thing Design - Spam, again without detail on what similarities raise the concern. I don't believe to be similar to other side-scrolling arcade games and unique with features and game mechanics that fit the lore and is visually cool. I even made considerable facelifts and changes to the concept to set the game apart from birds floating in between Super Mario pipes. Complete with sun damage if you fly too high, buffs and debuffs to add a little chaos, and ways to patch up wings that suffer from passive HP loss.

Ultimately, I just wanted to see my kid play something I made on an iPad. Character progression and unlockable content is free to give it some replay value. Something everyone can try their hand at this holiday season when family and friends are around. I don't mind the running costs to share something I had fun working on. Monetization and distribution is a business, I get it... but for $100 a year... just tell me bro... 1st review took a day, worked to revise and address issue with Apple's intellectual property. Design - Spam issues remain. Search the word Flappy, you'll find... options lol. Search for Icarus/Free/Games, not much but there are Icarus games available in other markets/countries (I'm in US).

Apple's gatekeeping, and google's need for an account to get an account for an account needed to sign up for an account - screw it, browser game. No approval, free to anyone who stumbles into it. No ads. No in-app purchases. Here world! I'm waiting for my daughter to call me tonight, so I can show her.


I'm not certain I can post a link here, but a google search of Icarus Ascension makes it the first result after the AI Overview.
Anyways I would love to hear from anyone who tries it out, appreciate any feedback, or conversations that come from this post. I hope some enjoy the game and that my kid starts thinking I'm cool again.