Show IH: Every puzzle app on iOS is an IAP mess, so I built one that'll always be better.
I love daily puzzles. I hate what the App Store has done to them. Every puzzle app I tried eventually turned into the same thing - an ad before you play, an ad after, and an iaps blocking you from playing what you want. I still cringe every time I get an ad before Wordle.
So I built Regularly (web - ios). It started a few years ago with one game, Countable, which I made for my then girlfriend (now wife) and me to play over morning coffee. One marriage and four games later it's spread by word of mouth and a few hundred people now play every day.
Every puzzle is hand-picked, and we track games started vs games completed each day, then re-tune difficulty with a model. The target is the zone where you have to think but you aren't stumped.
Monetisation plan: the daily puzzles stay free forever, no ads ever. At some point I'll charge a small amount for the back catalogue. That's it.
Question for anyone who's monetised a free game or content site without ads: does the paid back catalogue model work, or is there a smarter play I'm not seeing?
The "no ads ever, monetize via back catalogue later" model is refreshing, especially after naming the exact fatigue point (ads bookending Wordle) that a lot of daily-puzzle players clearly feel but rarely see addressed directly. Tracking started-vs-completed and re-tuning difficulty off that is a smart signal too — way more honest than guessing at difficulty from playtester feedback, since completion rate tells you almost immediately when you've drifted into "stumped" territory.
On the back-catalogue question: I think it works, but probably only once people have built a real daily habit with you first — the free dailies are what earns the trust that makes someone comfortable paying for more of something they already love, rather than a stranger's puzzle pack. One thing worth testing before committing fully to that model: a "streak" or history feature that shows people what they've missed. If someone misses a few days and sees gaps in their streak, the back catalogue stops being "extra content" and starts being "the thing that completes what I already have" — which tends to convert a lot better than a generic catalogue purchase.
Curious what "a few hundred people every day" looks like in terms of retention over time — do people who start playing daily tend to stick around for months, or is there a natural drop-off point you've noticed?
The hardest decision here isn't avoiding ads—it's deciding what people are actually willing to pay for in a puzzle product. I'd keep validating whether users come back because they want more puzzles, or because they trust your curation and difficulty tuning enough to make it part of their daily routine.