CatchIT! - Location-Based Art Game
Founder & Product Lead at CatchIT! · 2024 - Present
Building a location-based gaming platform that turns cities into playgrounds for discovering digital art.
The Challenge
Create an engaging location-based game that combines urban exploration with collectible digital art. The NFT market had crashed, but we believed limited digital ownership was sound, just misused. We needed to build something that avoided the toxic "NFT" label while capturing the compelling mechanics of scarcity and collecting.
My Approach
Market & User Research
Analyzed competitors (Pokémon GO, Monster Hunter Now, Geocaching), identified the UGC gap, and conducted interviews at micro-illustrator art fairs to validate demand from both creators and collectors.
Product Vision
Defined the concept: a mobile game where illustrations become treasures players hide and discover in the real world. Two-sided value prop—collectors get a Pokémon GO-like experience with real treasures; creators get a new channel to gamify and monetize their art.
Design System
Built pixel-art aesthetic after beta testers highlighted how "Catchito" (our mascot) gave the app personality. Brought on an art director and committed fully to the differentiated visual identity.
Technical Implementation
Led frontend development with React + Ionic Capacitor for cross-platform mobile, integrating Mapbox for geolocation and building the collect-trade-create core loop.
Data Analysis
Implemented Amplitude for product analytics and ran SQL queries daily against our database to understand usage patterns. This data-driven approach informed every iteration of the core loop and helped us measure retention metrics against industry benchmarks.
Key Decisions
- →Excluded blockchain entirely. User interviews showed strong aversion to NFT terminology.
- →Chose proximity-based collection (100m radius) over physical QR codes for lower friction.
- →Added "Catchapons" (random generation) so new players always find something to catch, even in areas with no creator content yet.
- →Committed to pixel-art aesthetic for strong brand differentiation.
- →Focused on single-player first to validate core loop before social features.
Results
We ran a closed beta with ~200 users to validate the core gameplay loop before investing in marketing. All retention metrics exceeded industry top 25% benchmarks for casual mobile games by 2-5x, validating that the core loop has strong potential.
D1 Retention
50%
~1.8x industry top 25%
D7 Retention
35%
~4.5x industry top 25%
D30 Retention
12%
~4x industry top 25%
Key Learnings
- ✓User perception of a technology matters as much as the technology itself. We implemented the same digital ownership mechanics, but removing NFT terminology eliminated the trust barrier and let users engage with the actual collecting experience.
- ✓Aesthetic drives emotional connection. Committing to pixel-art gave the app a distinctive personality that users remembered and talked about, turning a functional product into an experience.
- ✓Unlike SaaS, games don't solve a problem, they deliver an experience. Validating willingness to pay requires polished core mechanics, because rough prototypes can't convey the feeling that makes players spend.
- ✓Retention proves the product works, but gaming competes for attention against thousands of alternatives. Validating that you can cut through the noise and monetize requires significant investment in marketing.
Tech Stack
Links
Have questions about this project or want to know more?
Ask the AI Assistant