LineTime

Context

LineTime was a mobile trivia game where players ordered cards and events along timelines or metric scales. The product covered 60+ public categories, multiplayer challenges, single-player modes, leaderboards, missions, achievements, rewards, chat, customisation and monetisation.

I ran the product end-to-end, from graphic polish on the Unity client through to backend, editorial tooling and deployment. As CTO and Tech Lead I coordinated a junior programmer and worked occasionally with other senior developers, while keeping a hands-on implementation role.

Governing complexity that grew over time

LineTime did not start with a complete roadmap. Features and modules were decided and designed progressively across more than four years. The main challenge was fitting each new area into an already-published product, governing complexity without compromising gameplay, maintenance or service continuity.

The Unity client used dependency injection, signals and async flows to keep gameplay features separate from platform services. Challenges were asynchronous and turn-based: HTTP handled data and results, while Socket.IO distributed realtime updates. The backend coordinated three-round matches, MMR-based matchmaking, bot fallback, leaderboards, XP and rewards through separate processes for API, realtime, back office and jobs.

From manual handling to an editorial workflow

A particularly delicate phase began when content, authors and languages all grew at once. To stop that growth turning into fragile manual work, I built a back-office platform with an Angular frontend.

The system handled roughly 150 categories across five languages. Authors could bulk-import content, translate it, check completeness and validity, and organise it by category and market. Roles and permissions separated available operations. A commit, test, per-environment publish and rollback workflow allowed cards, calendars and configuration to be updated without shipping a new app release.

That evolution turned LineTime from a single mobile game into a product an editorial team could operate, keeping client, realtime backend and content coordinated over time.

Outcome

LineTime was published on Google Play and the Apple App Store and maintained from 2019 to 2024. Over its lifecycle it recorded around three million games started; on Android it passed 2,000 daily active users at peak. Figures read from the game's production systems before shutdown.

The product was later withdrawn from the stores as a business decision. The shutdown was not caused by a technical problem and does not erase the result: a cross-platform system built, published, evolved and operated in production for over four years.

UX/UI for the early phases and the versions shown: Sara Capodiferro. Visuals used with permission, from the Behance projects covering the MVP and releases up to 4.0.