Warcodes Developer Interview July 2025

Warcodes Developer Interview July 2025 - Jappleseed

Hello Japple! First I’d like to say that it’s been a long time that I’ve found a pvp game as fair as Warcodes is, in terms of balance of power between players. The Warcodia update was almost perfect as well and really the only  thing that didn’t make it perfect, for me, was the unfinished profile page/area. Can you give any hints on what that will look like in an update to come?

The profile area is intended to be your “home” area, where you can customize what shows up there. For example, you may want to showcase your trophies from a past tournament, rewards collected in game, or just show off some of your favorite monsters.

Let’s talk about the team behind Warcodes. How many developers are there? And if this is a 1 man show, what inspired Warcodes? How did the idea come to life? 

The project started with me just playing around with AI. I created several prototypes, all built around the idea of gamifying AI. Warcodes stood out as an early prototype—mainly because, when I showed it to my kids for the first time, they were ecstatic. They wouldn’t stop scanning barcodes. The idea was inspired by a device I had as a kid called the Barcode Battler. I’d always wanted to remake that game so the barcode you scanned actually influenced the character you got. With the power of AI, that was finally possible.

Warcodes has a patreon (https://www.patreon.com/CozyOrchards), can you explain a little bit about how the support has changed the game from when you started to now?

Support for the game has been overwhelming. There are many passionate players active in the Reddit and Discord communities. As a solo developer originally, that support was what kept me motivated to keep building the game. Without an active community, it’s easy to lose focus on what matters most. They helped keep me on track.

Starting the Patreon wasn’t really my idea. Several players were asking how they could support the game beyond just playing. One person in particular—Celli, after whom Celli’s Market is named—happened to find a Patreon I had set up a couple of years ago for another game I was working on. Once he joined, I figured I’d just embrace it. Since then, it’s become very popular among players who love the game and want to support its growth. 

Discord seems to be where the main community of Warcodes gather but not everyone likes Discord. What are the major differences you see between the Discord community and the Reddit community? 

Reddit seems to be more accessible to people. It’s also been helpful for new players discovering the game, as many of the threads show up in Google searches for Warcodes. Because of that, Reddit serves as a good stepping stone into the game, with a lot of players helping out newcomers.

Discord feels like the “next level” from there, where you’ll find more of the hardcore players. It can get pretty heated at times. It’s not for everyone, but we do our best to moderate it.

Back to Warcodia, I think we can call it Warcodes first Major update. What can we expect from the next major update? Is there any teaser you can give the community?

Hopefully, I won’t have to do that big of an update again. Warcodia changed a lot of the app’s layout and put the framework in place for many upcoming features. Future updates will be smaller but should come out much more frequently. Right now, I’m focused on improving player onboarding, since a lot of new players tend to get a little lost.

The more exciting news, though, is that monster breeding might be coming soon!

The marketplace is very well thought out, including the items, weapons, potions, scanner items, and chamber system. Are there any big ideas for the growth of this area of the game? I know there is an idea in the works for players to be able to sell items, what’s the biggest obstacle for implementing this feature?

I’m happy with the current balance of the game. You’ll hear from more experienced players that there are certain “builds” you’ll want to stick to, but plenty of players are using different combinations of items on their monsters and getting great results. The next evolution of items won’t arrive until new battle mechanics are introduced, but we’re still a ways off from that.

Selling items should be coming soon—the biggest hurdle is just prioritizing other features right now.

Is Warcodes anything like your typical trading card or creature collection games? If yes, do you think trading or 1v1 battles could work in Warcodes? If not, will PvE become the main feature for Warcodes?

Yes. When I designed the battle mechanics, I approached it like a board game. It’s loosely based on DnD rules (dice rolls). You can actually resolve battles between monsters without the app, just using physical dice and turn-based mechanics.

The plan is to keep the battle gameplay the same whether you’re facing a computer opponent or a human opponent, so that both PvP and PvE can exist using the same rules. The PvE side is close to where I want it, but it still needs some work to get there.

How hard would it be to implement movement into monster images? Ex. The monster is static but the background has stars that flicker. 

Almost everything is possible now—the issue is cost. AI is still pretty expensive. The problem with using a static background (which wouldn’t require AI) is that the monster image would need a transparent background. Creating that requires additional AI processing to separate the image, which would drive costs up. Hopefully, AI costs will come down over time—or Warcodes will grow enough to support the added expense.

How invested are you in player feedback?

I strongly believe that great communities build great games. I have a lot of ideas (a lot), but some of the best ideas for the game have come from others. As the designer (among everything else I do), my job isn’t to come up with all the ideas—it’s to listen to others, observe what they’re doing (or not doing), gather feedback, etc etc. From there, my job is to organize all of that into a cohesive game experience that works.

Final question. What is your favorite thing about Warcodes? And, do you have a secret account you play on?

My favorite thing about the game is the same as most people’s: finding out what kind of monster you get from different products. But honestly, my favorite thing about Warcodes is the community. There are so many genuinely great people who’ve been part of Warcodes since the beginning—they’re what keep me going. The only downside is that it’s gotten so big, it’s hard to keep up with everything that’s happening, which makes it tougher to engage as much as I did early on. I’m working on setting up live AMA sessions on Discord—hopefully that will help carve out time to make sure I’m not losing touch with the community. 

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. We appreciate your hard work, effort, and time.

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