Calm games
Zamborin Games
Doom-scrolling was winning my attention, so I made it a design challenge: something smarter, and just as fun, to win it back. The answer is Zamborin, a growing portfolio of games built to earn its keep on the major game portals. Founded, designed, and built by me with the help of AI.
Six games on this page · A desktop and a phone build of each · Five made for GameDistribution and CrazyGames · Live at zamborin.com
92%
Levels finished
Of every level a player starts, more than nine in ten are seen through to the end.
58%
On a phone
The share of visitors on mobile. Every game has a build made for one.
37%
Outside the US
Visitors from 22 countries within a single month.
Early numbers from a young business: zamborin.com, the 30 days to 12 September 2026.
Six of a growing portfolio, running right here: the real games, not screenshots. Flip through and play, and find the rest at zamborin.com.
The problem
The gap on the portal shelf
My fix for the feed was also a business. Portals such as GameDistribution and CrazyGames put a single HTML5 game in front of large audiences and share the revenue from the ads around it. What they really pay for is sessions.
- Clones made to squeeze out ad impressions
- Clever ideas with nothing to bring a player back
- Ads that interrupt a player mid-thought, who then quits
- Boards with no solution, which lose a player for good
The solution
Calm to learn, built to earn
Each game is one board and one rule that a player of any age grasps in seconds, crafted in every piece and motion, and made to the portals' commercial rules.
- Original concepts, from a process that kills far more ideas than it keeps
- A par to beat and something that can go wrong, to bring the player back
- Ads only at natural pauses, never over the board or during a move
- Every board generated from a solved state, so a solution always exists
Takeaway: Good design and good business point the same way.
Insight
The aha is what brings a player back
The reward is the snap, the connect, the bloom: the moment a board resolves and the player knows they solved it rather than stumbled into it.
- The aha
- A returning player
- Sessions
Takeaway: A returning player is exactly what a portal pays for.
Decisions
What I decided, and what it cost
Ad breaks where play has already stopped
Instead of: Run ads on a timer or over the game, which shows more ads per session.
Cost: Fewer ad impressions per minute than an aggressive layout. The bet is that longer, repeated sessions more than make up the difference.
One rule, deep play, over feature depth
Instead of: Layer mechanics, modes and unlocks for more apparent content and longer sessions.
Cost: There is less obvious content to point at, and every rule has to be truly deep or the game reads as thin. The bar for the core idea is brutal.
Procedural generation with guaranteed solvability
Instead of: Hand-author levels, or scatter elements at random and hope each board works out.
Cost: The generator is the hard engineering, and difficulty has to be tuned as a curve rather than drawn by hand, level by level.
Mechanism-mining as the idea engine
Instead of: Riff on the existing casual-game genres, which is faster and lands on familiar ground.
Cost: It is slower, and most candidates die at the gate. You trade hit rate for originality, and you have to be willing to bin a clever idea that gives the player nothing to play for.
The App Store and Google Play, with the whole game inside
Instead of: Wrap the website in an app, which Apple turns down, or rewrite every game natively.
Cost: Apple’s $99 a year and Google’s one-off $25, a store review for every release, and a closed test with 12 testers for 14 days before each Android game can launch.
Takeaway: You trade hit rate for originality.
Readiness
Any game, packaged for either portal
One build pipeline packages any game for GameDistribution or CrazyGames and strips out whatever each portal's terms forbid.
- Any game
- One build pipeline
- GameDistribution or CrazyGames
- One shared ad layer works across both portals, and does nothing at all on zamborin.com
- Every game reports how it is played
- The first games are now in portal review
- The same games are being packaged for the App Store and Google Play, starting with Marble
Takeaway: Ready to grow: one pipeline, one ad layer, and every game measured.
Outcome
What it demonstrates
- Product and business strategy, and monetisation design
- Integration with two game portals, and systems thinking
- Generative and procedural craft, and a hands-on front-end build
- Brand and visual design, and a documented creative process I can run again
Takeaway: Strategy, design and build, all from one person.