Version 1.5, the ‘less is more’ version comes with plenty of optimizations, and therefore not much new; worse even, the app now actually has less. I cleaned up the start screen. The ‘how to play’ has changed from a big button to an questionmark icon (‘?’) in the top left. The ‘custom game’ option is completely gone. Three options remain: the adventure mode, the daily challenge, and the quick game option.

The daily challenge now gets a stamp once you’ve solved it; you can still play the challenge, but the daily challenge stays the same all day, so now you can see at a glance whether you’ve already done it.

Note: you can set the difficulty of a quick game yourself by clicking the stamp in front of the button. Click the stamp to make the game harder. Keep clicking to cycle back to the easiest level after the hardest one.

The leaderboards have been redesigned. The game now uses your total score to compare your results with the rest of the world. There is a leaderboard for your total score per mode (adventure, daily, quick) and a combined total score.

There are also a few new achievements, and a few bugs have been fixed.

Sometimes we all just want to take the easy route. The sneaky shortcut right through the middle. And now in Mushroom Mayhem you can do exactly that.
Before, you had to really get your hands dirty and play a bunch to gather edible mushrooms, the kind you’d later use to peek at a suspicious patch without risk. But those days are gone. Now you can skip the grind, loosen the purse strings, and simply buy yourself a handful of tasty mushrooms.


Also, highscores! Now your scores are tracked in the app. For each game type you’ll see the highest score, the number of games played, the win ratio, the time played, and your total score which is all the points added together.

On top of that, some screens have been improved, both visually and in usability, and a few bugs have been fixed. Go get that update!

What can I say. What started as a small hobby project, a half-finished but working app has grown into a professional app. I’ve been doing a lot of tinkering with the mushrooms lately. There’s now a full adventure mode that fits perfectly into the storyline. I also added a new game mode for players who want to choose between a quick match or a more strategic challenge.

On the horizon you can already see small clusters of mushrooms. As you walk through the forest, you see them coming closer and closer. Every now and then you come across a little field that you need to search through.

Watch out for the poisonous mushrooms, and look for the edible ones. You won’t find the edible ones often, but when you do, it’s always worth it. Once you’ve picked a field clean, you continue on to the next one. A perfect way to unwind.

This is what I wanted to achieve for the adventure mode of Mushroom Mayhem. What I had before was just a long list, which didn’t fit the feeling I wanted to evoke at all. Luckily, with the help of AI, I managed to straighten it out. The adventure mode has now been transformed into a beautiful map where new levels appear as soon as you complete a level. (Small) inconvenience is that you will need to start your adventure from scratch. Your old adventures don’t count anymore so you will have to start anew from step one.

There is more. The different game modes now look more alike: the game in the center and at the bottom a line of text indicating what you’re doing: an adventure level, a daily challenge, a quick game, or a (new) custom game. There are even more achievements to unlock, and the entire app has received a refreshed, improved look and feel.

It does work. I had rushed the initial version of Mushroom Mayhem into the store, with quite a few bugs still in it and really only the bare minimum features needed to make it playable. I strongly suspected that doing this would prevent the project from stalling again and me not looking at it for years. And it worked. Even though there are only around 20 people that installed the game, I’m motivated, and many evenings I find myself improving and fine-tuning the app.

Another pretty big update. This time I used an ‘agent’ to add large chunks of functionality all at once. An agent recieves a job, breaks it up in logical parts and assigns all the parts to a collection of AI tools that work together to carry out each task. After a while when all the tasks are complete the agent combines them all to a final result and marks the entire task as completed. After completion I could review everything and approve it if it was all correct. Super easy, as long as you describe the initial task clearly.

AI updates:

• Integrate Apple game center to keep a leaderboard for the daily challenges.
• Integrate Apple game center and added a list of achievements you can win while playing the game.

I also did some things myself and updated all the apps graphics, so everything looks a little bit cleaner, the app has a brand new icon and there are a number of bigger changes:

• Improved explanation of the game.
• This time you’ll see your score after finishing a game.
• You can also specify in the settings how difficult a ‘quick game’ should be. By default, a quick game is manageable with a bit of logical thinking, but now you can choose the difficulty yourself, from ‘very easy’ to ‘very hard’.

I’ve shifted the work I do on MM to the evenings. Before going to sleep. Rather than enjoying part of a movie or an episode of a series I now spend the last hour of my day talking and experimenting with my programming assistant. Over the past few days, I’ve made some improvements, so you can now get the new version.

Thanks for your feedback! The new version has a daily challenge and new edible mushrooms which you can use to get a little help when you’re stuck.

• New daily challenge!
• Five new levels in the adventure mode. These are very hard levels, so be patient!
• A whole new gameplay dimension: you can now find edible mushrooms (and click to collect them), which can be used to investigate any block you suspect might contain a toxic mushroom.
  

  Once collected, the mushroom is stored for future use. Consuming an edible mushroom increases your awareness of nature and gives you a brief burst of intuition. It allows you to focus your thoughts and pick up on insights you might otherwise have missed. Simply click the edible mushroom icon in the top right, then select the area you wish to explore to get a sneak peek, whether it’s something worth uncovering or something best avoided.

• New immersive music track.