After a six-week vacation (much needed!), I came back with fresh eyes and new energy. I restrained myself from coding – mostly – but I definitely didn’t stop thinking about Connect 3D.

Back from Break: Rest, Play and Fresh Ideas

During my break, I took the opportunity to play Connect 3D with friends and family on a variety of phones and tablets. It was eye-opening! I discovered several small UX issues I hadn’t noticed before and gathered tons of feedback from casual players.

One of the best parts? Seeing people enjoy the game. It was fun, intuitive, and sparked friendly competition. I even caught a few people saying, “Wait, let’s do one more match.”

I also jotted down ideas for future features – things like game variants, challenges, tournaments, seasonal board themes, and expanded avatar options.

This informal playtesting gave me a valuable new perspective and confirmed that Connect 3D is not only functional – even though it’s a quite simple game, it’s still challenging and genuinely fun.

Visual Retouch

With fresh energy, I kicked off Sprint 9 by retouching all graphics in the game. The goal: make everything feel polished, modern, and production-ready. From the beginning I had a clear (and advanced) vision of how it should look, but after a lot of play testing I realized that I kind of like the current down scale, simple design and it actually fits the game really well. So instead of a major overhaul I introduced a more refined color palette, updated fonts and buttons for clarity and consistency and let the game board itself get some extra love too: smoother textures and subtle lighting updates. It now looks much more like a finished game.

Animations and Sound Effects

Nothing brings a game to life like movement and sound. I added smooth piece placement animations plus simple sound effects and vibrations.

It makes the game feel responsive, polished and satisfying to play. Even losing feels better when there’s a clean little chime to close things out. 😅

Security and Stability Work

This sprint wasn’t just about the visuals. I also dedicated time to tightening the backend and client logic:

• Cleaned up token handling and access control.
• Validated game data more rigorously on the server side.
• Improved crash reporting and error logs.
• Ran stress tests with AI players and simulated load.

Even though most of this isn’t visible to players, it’s crucial. A secure, stable game is a game people can trust.

Up Next: Test Releases and Final Prep

Sprint 10 will be all about preparing for real-world exposure:

• Redesign and polish all screens in both portrait and landscape modes for phones and tablets.
• Set up closed testing through Google Play and Apple TestFlight.
• Optimize Azure configuration to keep things fast, scalable, and cost-effective.
• Brush up on GDPR and data privacy regulations and write a solid privacy policy and terms of use.

We’re nearing the finish line. The next few sprints are about polish, testing and launch readiness. I can’t wait to get Connect 3D into more hands.

– Elena