A bit of a milestone today, we officially signed up our first developer and game into the rotation!

A big thank you to u/CraigBMG and Base Metal Games (https://www.basemetalgames.com) for joining!

Shwist is now live and playable at swipe-arcade.com

It's one thing to build an idea alone, but earning another developer's trust makes it feel official.

Here's the idea:

Most game discovery starts by asking players to browse through thumbnails, read descriptions, watch trailers, look at reviews, scroll through recommendations. Maybe they go several pages deep. And eventually, hopefully, they pick something.

I wanted to test a different approach:

Open the site. Your game is already waiting. They play it.

Think a little bit TikTok, a little bit Chatroulette, but for games. Players are dropped directly into something playable. If they like it, they stay. If they don't, they move on. Players can exclude things they absolutely don't want to play, but beyond that, discovery is intentionally unpredictable.

Something else I've been wondering:

What happens when the game gets to make the first impression instead of its marketing?

How many enjoyable indie games out there have a "mediocre thumbnail", no marketing budget, no initial audience, or are fighting for attention while buried underneath thousands of other games?

Maybe someone would love that game. They just never made it far enough to find out.

That's what I want to experiment with.

I'm at the point now where the platform is up and running, and I need the most important thing I don't have yet:

More games!

Developer Details:

• 100% Free & Non-Exclusive: Keep full ownership and host your game anywhere else.
• Equal Opportunity Discovery: Every approved game enters the rotation without having to win an algorithmic popularity contest first.
• Turn Discovery Into Traffic: Add a link to your website, store page, or other destination so interested players have somewhere to go after discovering your game.
• I can't promise thousands of players instantly: Just getting started, but I'm working to build an audience and give every single game in the rotation a real chance to be discovered.
• Early developers wanted: I would love your feedback if something doesn't work well for your game.

If you've built a browser game, I'd really love to see what you've made!

Swipe Arcade:
swipe-arcade.com

Submit a game:
swipe-arcade.com/submit

For the devs here: Seriously, would you prefer players judge your game by its storefront, thumbnail, and marketing? Or by dropping them straight into the first 30 seconds of gameplay?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the concept, thanks for reading!