The app

PuzzlePal is an app that offers a variety of free and fun puzzles designed to improve cognitive skills while eliminating boredom. With a constantly expanding library of puzzles and games, users can choose from different categories to improve their skills in words, logic, and visuals. The app features puzzles like Nonograms, WordWheel, Bridges, Camping, ColorLink, WordPile, and Tectonic, with varying levels of difficulty to automatically adapt to the user’s skill level.

Published by Keesing MG, PuzzlePal also provides insights about the user’s play history to track their progress and challenge friends, and a difficulty system that automatically adapts to their skill level, from Basic to Expert. With its beautiful modern design, PuzzlePal is guaranteed to keep users entertained for hours while exercising their brains at the same time.

My Contributions

The PuzzlePal app was born as a partnership between Elevate Labs and Keesing MG. I was tasked with a very interesting role: developing the initial pitch for the app into a project outline, including scope, team, budget and timeline. After that initial stage, I led both the technical and product management aspects of the project from start to delivery.

After the project was handed off to Keesing MG, I was hired as a consultant to help them continue development of the project with their in-house team. The app was launched in 2021 and has continued to grow since then. Here’s a brief overview of my contributions to the project:

On the technical side:

  • Set up CI system for unit testing and deployment (TeamCity, fastlane).
  • Built an OpenGL-based macOS app as an internal tool to run and develop games (Obj-C, C++), which greatly increased development speed and productivity.
  • Integrated Sign in with Apple and Anonymous Signup, resulting in 50% -> 95% signup rates (Obj-C, Ruby/Rails).
  • Designed and built the Achievements feature (Obj-C, C++, Lua).

On the management side:

  • Developed product roadmap, structured team, and established development processes.
  • Hired 2 new team members, from recruitment to interviewing & onboarding.
  • Owned product management & technical leadership.