I believe most human inventions are created either out of necessity or for comfort, then iterated and improved over time. This project is no different. Its inception stemmed from my personal need, you could say. About five years ago, while I was still in college pursuing an engineering degree, like most college students, I enjoyed (and still do) partying, drinking excessively, and engaging in foolish (and sometimes illegal) activities. One night, during a small vacation in Valencia, Spain, with a couple of friends, someone suggested we play a game. But it wasn’t a regular game; it was a drinking game app. It combined two of my favorite pastimes at the time: drinking and playing games (which, I admit, are still my favorite hobbies five years later).
When the five of us started playing this silly game, I didn’t expect it to be anything special. However, four hours flew by, we finished an excessive amount of alcohol equivalent to two days’ worth, and we were all so intoxicated we could barely form a coherent sentence. When we sobered up a little, it was already 6 or 7 in the morning, and we finally went to sleep. To this day, I remember that night as one of the best in my life.
Over the next couple of years, I played this game periodically with different groups of friends, each time noticing new design flaws, slight game mechanic imperfections, and, ultimately, what irked me the most: the implementation of microtransactions and later a subscription model.
Now, what was once a fun game available for a modest 5€ to 10€, can now cost up to 4.99€ per week (at least in Europe). That’s 259.48€ per year (roughly 280$ at today’s exchange rate) for a game you might play at most 10 to 20 times a year.
To put this in perspective:
- A year-long subscription to Amazon Prime costs 139$.
- A year-long subscription to Spotify costs 99$.
- A year-long subscription to Netflix costs 155.88$.
- A year-long subscription to Disney Plus costs 139.99$
Do you see what I mean? The relentless corporate greed continuously inflates prices, while the board members see nothing wrong with it as long as short-term profits rise. Nowadays, when you read recent reviews on the Play Store or Apple Store, they are overwhelmingly negative. The app in question is Picolo.
So, with all this in mind, a couple of years ago, I transitioned from the “I could do this better” phase to the “Hey, I probably should do this, but better” phase. As I seriously contemplated it, my years of personal use and experience finally paid off. I could now implement improvements and rectify the issues I found with the game.
When I started this project, I didn’t do everything right, and I certainly didn’t plan for a lot of things, but I did get one thing right, and that was starting. I began jotting down ideas, conducting extensive research on my main competitors, and when I had a very rough plan sketched out, I realized I needed a programmer. Initially, I planned to collaborate with a friend of mine who was studying something akin to a programming degree at the time. I pitched him my idea, we agreed, and we started working, without any compromises.
I was responsible for writing all the content for the app, mechanics, and most of the graphic design. He handled the programming. For a couple of months, it seemed like we were making steady progress, but life got in the way. My friend became consumed with university work, found a job, and relocated to another state with his girlfriend. He had virtually no free time left, and his work on the project completely stagnated, which I understood because I would have done the same in his situation. This was a side project that demanded a considerable amount of unpaid work and time, with the hope that someday it would pay off. After about a year of no progress, we unofficially ended the project.
However, I had already written most of the content and essentially had the framework of a working game. I refused to let all that effort go to waste. At this point, I contemplated between learning to code an app myself or paying someone to do it for me, but I didn’t have much money (in fact, I had none at all). By sheer coincidence, my brother had just begun studying web programming, and I thought, why not make a website instead of an app? I pitched him my idea, we discussed it for about an hour, and he agreed. Since I had completed most of my work already, I had time to assist him wherever possible. So, we got to work, and after about four months of consistent effort, we had a functioning website. We spent about 10€ on a domain name (www.parte.me) and approximately 120€ on hosting and launched it by early 2023. And then… nothing. I anticipated the website gaining traction rapidly because I believed I had an exceptional product (which I still do). However, my work had just begun because I had no understanding of how the internet worked.
I had a drinking game that, in my opinion, was a superior version of all my main competitors (due to thorough research), and I’ll tell you why I think so:
- It features over 3200 unique dares, questions, and challenges, which are updated monthly, whereas most apps offer only a couple of hundred different challenges. Even the drinking games available on Amazon are inferior, typically comprising less than 250 cards, becoming repetitive after a few plays.
- It doesn’t necessitate registration, downloads, or learning any rules. You simply enter the website, input the names of the players (up to 20), and hit the “Play” button. The game takes control and instructs you precisely on what to do. You can play it virtually anywhere and anytime with an internet connection. In contrast, physical drinking games require purchasing the game beforehand, bringing it with you when you want to play, and learning the rules (though they’re usually straightforward). Apps may also require downloading, registering, and paying to start playing.
- Design. Though not paramount, some available apps are visually unappealing, causing discomfort: bright and contrasting colors, odd sound effects and background music, unnecessary gifs and animations, low-resolution graphics, and more. While it may seem trivial, I believe that products should not be visually jarring.
- Price. I don’t aim to get ultra-rich from this venture; rather, I want people to enjoy something I made with my own hands, which is immensely gratifying. Therefore, the full game is free now and forever. We have incorporated minor, non-intrusive ads and an affiliate link to generate some profit to cover basic costs, but our primary objective is to enhance user experience.
You can also check the website by yourself here at Parte. With all this in mind, I genuinely believed the game would gain traction within a few months. However, we saw little to no organic growth for weeks, then months, until I discovered a thing called SEO. That was the day I realized we had a considerable amount of work ahead of us before seeing any results. Consequently, we spent about two months optimizing our website using free tools like Seobility and then paid for one month of Sitechecker to fine-tune our SEO for approximately 40€, if I recall correctly. We wrote articles, refined our meta descriptions and titles, added and modified tags, incorporated files like robots.txt (I still don’t completely understand what it does), and much more. Simultaneously, we began promoting our website through social networks (primarily TikTok) and soliciting feedback on our game from personal friends.
In the end, out of hundreds of TikToks, only one (literally one out of hundreds) went viral, garnering approximately 100,000 unique visitors in one month. Though our visitor count has dwindled since the viral video, it has instilled in us the confidence needed to continue learning and improving our creation, with a focus now on organic growth. Throughout this endeavor, we have acquired a wealth of knowledge, as is typical when embarking on something from scratch. If I had known from the beggining that I would have to invest so much time and effort, I may have been too intimidated to start.
What I want to say is that if you ever aspire to undertake something (no matter how grand or modest), and you’re uncertain of how or where to start, just do it anyway. That’s how you learned to walk as a child. That’s how you learned to ride a bicycle. The same principle applies to projects, which are infinitely more complex and vast. Just attempt it, and gradually, you’ll grasp it.
