Our Story

BattleMaps is a game I first imagined in 2008, holding the very first Android phone. It took most of two decades, three rebuilds and a whole new kind of tool to make it the game I pictured back then.

2008: a phone that could see and know where it was

When the T-Mobile G1 came out, it was the first time a phone in your pocket had a camera, GPS, a real internet connection and an app store all at once. I remember thinking: every product on every shelf already has a code printed on it, and every street corner is a real place. What if every barcode hid a creature, and every place on the map was something you could fight over?

That was the whole idea, and it has never really changed: scan the world around you to find fighters, raise them, and battle for the places you actually go.

The long nights of the 2000s and 2010s

For years BattleMaps was something I built on nights and weekends, around a day job. Every piece was hand-made: the barcode scanning, the server, the map, the battle system, the art pipeline. Features I wanted took months. Features I dreamed about, like fighters that looked truly unique for every code or art worthy of a collectible card, were simply out of reach for one person.

BattleMaps shipped, people played it, and it kept a small, loyal following. But the version in the stores was always a fraction of the game in my head.

2026: building it again, with help

This year I sat down to revamp BattleMaps with AI coding assistance, working alongside it every day like a tireless teammate who never gets bored of the hard parts. The difference has been staggering.

In a matter of weeks, BattleMaps gained the things I'd wanted since 2008:

• Every code, its own fighter. Scanning builds a one-of-a-kind 3D fighter with its own species, faction, element, rarity and signature gear, and the same code always makes the same fighter.
• Collectible portraits. Keep a fighter and it's painted as character-card art, themed on the product it came from.
• A real pet to look after. Feeding, mood, strength and training minigames: a runner, combo drills, block-and-parry.
• Friends and trading. Add friends by scanning each other's codes, and swap fighters.
• A new look. Ink-outlined 3D, a circuit-board city, new music, sounds and effects.

To put it in numbers: the project's history holds more changes from the last few weeks than from all the years before them combined. Work that once took a season now takes an afternoon.

Why it matters to me

AI didn't come up with BattleMaps, and it didn't decide what makes it fun. Every idea, every rule and every "no, that's not right, try again" was mine, and still is. What changed is that one person with a stubborn idea from 2008 can finally build it at the size it deserves.

If you played the early versions: thank you for sticking around. If you're new: welcome. Go scan something. It's free to discover what's inside.

— Adam, Think New Games