I was wrong about game development - Mijndert Stuij

I was wrong about game development

July 6, 2026

A little over two weeks ago I released Burst and since then I added in a ton of bug fixes, and a completely new Zen mode for people who want to play without sweating the leader boards. Zen mode was born from the realisation that I was wrong about game development.

I thought making a game was all about what it looked like, how it played and how it felt. And in thinking that, I was so close to the truth, but also so far away. The thing I overlooked and underestimated was how hard it is to get the difficulty level of the game just right. Burst only has a couple of levers to pull to make the game easier or more challenging, but even with those few levers, I still got it wrong the first time.

In the very first release version of Burst, the game was a bit too easy. Games would go on forever, and it felt stale and boring after a short while. I wanted to adjust that slightly, so in a subsequent release I made the game more difficult; the bubbles would come at you faster, forcing the player to think a bit more. Quite a few people wrote in to say that the game was now too difficult, that they played because it was so chill and relaxing.

The leaderboards were already filled up with massive scores from the first version, and now those scores felt unobtainable. And that's why I created Zen mode, which brought back that initial difficulty level, but this time without the leaderboards so people can enjoy the game without worrying about their score and just relax. Maybe down the line I have to reset the leaderboards, but this will surely be a controversial decision, so I want to think about it a bit more before doing that.

As I said, Burst only has a few levers to pull, but imagine something like Zelda Breath of the Wild, where you have thousands of things interacting with the game world, and you have to get the difficulty level just right. I can only imagine how hard that must be, and I have a newfound respect for game developers who manage to get it right.

Another thing I probably got wrong, and a bit of a tangent, is that a few people asked for a tip jar to be included in the game. I thought about it, and decided to include it because it's discoverable, and not tied to some other third-party platform like Ko-Fi or Patreon. If people want to support the development of the game, and any further games I make, they can do so directly in the game. But that also means this stupid "in-app purchases" label is now on the App Store page, which I think is misleading. Technically, the tip jar is indeed an in-app purchase, but it's not a feature gate or anything like that. I think Apple shouldn't surface that label when the in-app purchase is just an optional tip jar. Although, people will probably try to abuse that too.

I will have to think about the tip jar being included. It's there now, but I might remove it again in a future update just to get rid of that label.

Burst is and forever will be free to play. I won't go back on that promise. The App Store is already full of scammy, ad-ridden apps and games as it stands.

Related posts

Burst: a free (no ads) bubble shooter game for iPhone

Burst is a bubble shooter game for iPhone with zero ads, no tracking, and no in-app purchases. It has power-ups, six coding-inspired themes, Game Center leaderboards, iCloud sync, and accessibility features. Completely free to play.

Read post

My favorite things on Steam Deck right now

Why the Steam Deck is the best handheld I've ever owned: PSP emulation with RetroDeck and streaming my Xbox through Greenlight, all because it's an open Linux device.

Read post