Kabo / iOS card game

Four cards. Keep them low. Call it first.

Kabo is a card game for iPhone: a four-card hand you are only ever allowed to half see, five card powers, and one word that ends the round.

RoleSolo founder / product engineer

ScopeProduct · Design · iOS · Backend · Launch

Download Kabo ↗

00 / The premise

A tiny ruleset, played for keeps.

01Half a hand
You see two of your four cards at the deal. The rest is memory and nerve.
02Powers, not luck
Peek, spy and swap turn a guessing game into a reading game.
03One word ends it
Call Kabo and everyone gets a last turn. Be strictly lowest, or lose.

01 / A round

Four cards, a lantern, and a cast that talks back.

01Deal
Four cards face down. You look at two of them, once.
02Draw
Swap it in blind, or spend its power to peek, spy or trade.
03Call
Say Kabo instead of drawing. Everyone else gets one last turn.
04Reveal
Lowest hand takes it. The caller has to be strictly lowest.

Issue No. 1The Lowest HandTwelve panels

02 / Built end to end

I took Kabo from the first rule to a live release.

What I owned

I took a small game all the way to the App Store.

I kept the surface simple by solving the systems underneath it: hidden information, turn order, multiplayer state, progression, purchases and a launch people can trust.

01
Product & game design
I set the rules, card powers, scoring, bots and the shape of every round.
02
iOS & backend engineering
I built the Swift and SwiftUI client, then wired Firebase and Firestore for rooms, turns and persistence.
03
Art direction & content
I directed 66 avatars, card backs, table themes and the twelve-panel comic that teaches the game.
04
Legal, launch & operations
I wrote the terms and privacy pages, set up StoreKit, prepared the App Store metadata and shipped the release.

02 / System card

A compact record of what the project made, taught and runs on.

Project system / 04

Kabo

Live

Launch facts

14days from portfolio record to release

1.0App Store launch version

66hand-drawn avatars

What we learned

A tiny ruleset creates more room for character, pacing and ritual, not less.
Onboarding lands when the product teaches by showing: the comic explains the game without a tutorial.
Multiplayer is mostly failure handling. The interesting work is what happens when someone leaves.

Tech stack

Swift
SwiftUI
Firebase
Firestore
StoreKit
AI-assisted art

Project state

Version 1.0 is live on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, with bots, private rooms and a full progression system.

ReturnPortfolio index↗