Show HN: Offsuit – Casual Poker, Redesigned (offsuit.app)

6 points by eli1stark ↗ HN
For the past year my friend and I have been building a dead simple offline poker app that we actually wanted to spend time in.

No constant pop-ups. No account needed. No waiting for tables. No fake felt or neon.

Just free poker against intelligent AI opponents with helpful in-game stats.

We’ve started offline, but are working towards online-multiplayer, tutorials for new players, and more in-game stats.

Would love your feedback!

4 comments

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The website and app (judging from screenshots) look great and intuitive. Until I click to “get the app” and I’m immediately turned off.

First is that clicking the link on a desktop does not provide a link, but an opaque QR code to scan. Not good but all right, I’ll just go to it on the phone. In-App Purchases. Which almost universally means a subscription or other method of trying to extract recurring revenue. On a mobile game. Huge red flag, but again I give it the benefit of the doubt and tap to see what those are.

Chips. You have to pay real money to get fake chips to play against fake opponents. That’s not “casual poker”, it’s real poker made less fun.

Were this a one-off purchase to play a few hands against friends, it would have been an insta-buy of multiple copies. As it is, I’ll never look at it again.

Plus, for something which looks so limited it does not bode well that you have large Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, and EULA. Why do you collect data at all?

Kudos on the design and presentation, but I wish just about everything else were different.

Regarding the QR code, we have a dynamic link there. If you open it on a mobile device, it will redirect you to the corresponding app store. On desktop, we simply show the QR code to scan.

We don't require players to buy anything. You can grow your bankroll organically. In case you run out of chips and don't want to make an in-app purchase, you can always watch an ad that will give you enough chips to play in the first tournament.

"Were this a one-off purchase to play a few hands against friends, it would have been an insta-buy of multiple copies." - Playing against friends would require a standalone backend, and we have this on our roadmap. However, a one-time purchase of the game would not keep the servers running for a long time.

We don't collect any personal information. The only data we collect are usage analytics and crash reports.

Thank you for your honest feedback!

Looks very nice. Way better than the clunky options on the App Store. Downloaded for later. Good job!