Erwin - Looking for VoiceOver feedback on my indie puzzle game

By Tamas Bartal, 21 July, 2026

Forum
iOS and iPadOS Gaming

Hello,

I'm an indie developer, and I'd like to share my game with you: Erwin - A Quantum Puzzle, a spatial puzzle that puts the 2048-like sliding merge mechanic on a 3D cube. As a twist, quantum effects - like superposition or entanglement - emerge gradually as you play. It is available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and requires iOS 26, iPadOS 26, or macOS 26.

Its latest update includes several accessibility improvements, and I'd like to hear your feedback about the game's usability, navigation, and VoiceOver gameplay.

I built it as a solo project, with Apple's native frameworks only. Erwin has no ads, no in-app purchases, no tracking, no dark monetization patterns, no constant nagging.

What's on the screen

The game shows a 3D cube - similar to a Rubik's Cube - floating in front of a dark background like a hologram, each of its six faces is a four-by-four grid. Tiles sit in the grid's cells, marked with colors and different shapes indicating their value. As you start playing, your current score is displayed in the top left corner, and a Pause button is at the bottom center of the screen.

How to play

Tiles can slide across the active, front facing side of the cube. Tiles on the edges of the cube can move on either face. Matching tiles merge into one, and after each move, new tiles appear in random empty cells. Tile values start at 2 and double with each merge: 4, 8, 16, and 32. Each merge adds the new tile's value to your score. The highest valued tiles don't merge, and the cube slowly fills up. Again, 2048-like logic in 3D.

You can rotate the cube to play on all six faces. The game ends when the cube is full and no more moves are possible. The goal is to reach the highest score you can.

VoiceOver gameplay

The active face of the cube, in the center of the screen, is a VoiceOver grid.

  • Touch the grid to hear each cell's contents and position: tile values, empty cells, and quantum states like superposed or entangled tiles.
  • Swipe with three fingers on the grid to slide the tiles. Erwin announces the result of every move: merges, points, your new score, and the value and position of new tiles.
  • Every cell also offers Slide up, Slide down, Slide left, Slide right, and Read face as custom actions.
  • Touch outside the cube, then swipe with three fingers to rotate. The same area carries Cube up, Cube down, Cube left, and Cube right as custom actions. After each rotation, Erwin announces which face is active and how many tiles it holds.
  • The score display in the top left corner speaks your score and record. Double-tap it to hear your score and the whole active face read out, row by row.
  • On the Mac, the arrow keys slide the tiles, and use Shift plus the arrow keys or W A S D to rotate the cube.

Feedback I'm looking for

I'd like to hear how the game plays in real use: exploring the board, move announcements, anything confusing, noisy, or missing. I'd especially value feedback from Braille display users - the board, the score, and the face readout are all designed to be queryable, but I have no Braille hardware to test with.

Erwin is localized in English, German, French, Italian, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, and Ukrainian - including all VoiceOver labels, hints, and announcements. If you play in any of these languages, I'd appreciate your feedback on how accurate and natural the translations sound in VoiceOver.

Price and promo codes

Erwin is a $4.99 one-time, universal purchase - you and up to five family members can play with Family Sharing enabled. If you'd like to test the game but the price is a barrier, I'd be happy to provide a few promo codes for accessibility feedback - please contact me via the AppleVis personal contact form, post a comment requesting a code, or email me at info@erwin-game.com.

Thank you, I look forward to hearing from you.

Options

Comments

By Zoe Victoria on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 - 15:44

This is a really interesting game and, though I'm not sure if I'm smart enough to truly understand it, it's really cool. The accessibility seems amazing so far, and the only issue I notice is there seems to be a bit of lag with voiceover in general, though I'm not sure why that is.

By Zoe Victoria on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 - 15:56

Is 32 meant to be the limit? Because I have two 32 tiles at at the bottom of one face of the cube next to each other and they will not merge.

By matheus rheine on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 - 19:07

The game is totally accessible and awesome, but Voiceover also lags when trying to play, making it kinda time consuming. if you can change something to reduce it it will be so great! Maybe you can reduce the graphics.

By Tamas Bartal on Tuesday, July 21, 2026 - 19:26

Thank you both for your kind words. I appreciate your feedback very much.

1) About the lag: I have a theory, but first let me ask:

  • What kind of device are you using? iOS 26 is supported from iPhone 11 and up, and performance on older phones can vary.
  • Do you recall when exactly the lag showed up? At touch exploration, move announcements, rotation - or everywhere?
  • Do you experience this lag system-wide or only with Erwin?
  • If you turn off background music and sound effects on the Pause screen, do you still feel this lag? VoiceOver and the game's own audio engine might interfere.

If we can pinpoint what the cause is, I'll do my best to fix it in an update.

2) Yes, you are right, tile values are capped at 32, and the highest valued tiles don't merge. In an update I'm going to add this information to the tile's VoiceOver label. I edited the "How to play" section of the post above because "...and so on..." was misleading, sorry.

Your question touches upon the game's design and balancing - when I designed Erwin I imagined a fidget-type game that you can play on a commute, and calibrated its difficulty to achieve a five, maybe ten minutes long average session. Because the game board is six times larger than in similar games ("2048" or "Threes!" for example), I set this cap to a lower value so the cube fills up in a reasonable time, and the game doesn't become too long, too complex, and eventually boring.

Thank you again for your time and valuable input, please reach out if you have anything to add, and I'll try my best to help.

By Zoe Victoria on Thursday, July 23, 2026 - 00:54

I'm using an iPhone 16e running iOS version 26 point something so that shouldn't be the problem. I experience the lag through the whole app, not system wide, and turning off music and sound effects doesn't stop the lag. Thank you for explaining the tile cap.

By matheus rheine on Thursday, July 23, 2026 - 01:29

Hey! I'm using the same model: the 16E also running ios 26. the lag still happen if I disable music and sound effects and disabling the hints doesn't help either. the phone also gets really hot after playing for a while. The lag is also happening at the start screen.

By Tamas Bartal on Friday, July 24, 2026 - 20:38

A quick follow-up, and first of all a thank-you. Version 1.3.3 has just been approved and is rolling out. This update addresses the issues you reported.

What changed in 1.3.3

Thermal issues and lag

  • I replaced the resource-heavy but ultimately only decorative particle systems based graphics with a similar but less expensive effect to avoid the phone getting warm and the battery draining.
  • Also, the game now listens to the system's thermal state notifications. If the device starts getting warm for any reason, Erwin turns off one more expensive visual effect, real-time shadows, and brings it back only once the device has cooled down.
  • Additional decorative effects and animations are switched off when VoiceOver is in use.

These fixes should also help with the VoiceOver lag you were experiencing, because I traced them back to the same core issue.

VoiceOver and audio

  • There may be a known VoiceOver issue where speech lags while other audio is playing. To work around it, when you turn off both the background music and sound effects on the pause screen, Erwin's audio engine now shuts down completely instead of just being muted, so that hopefully VoiceOver and the game's own audio engine don't interfere.
  • As tile values are capped at 32, the board readout now announces such a tile as "maximum 32" as promised.

Navigation

  • The Pause button no longer fades out when VoiceOver is running. It stays visible and focusable at all times.
  • The How to Play section was also reworded to make the merge and scoring rules clearer.

I tested these on an iPhone 13 mini, the oldest iOS 26 capable hardware I have.

I'm also working on the next update, slated for August if all goes well, that will extend VoiceOver gameplay to Multiplayer so you'll be able to play Erwin together with friends, taking turns on a shared cube.

Thank you again for your feedback, and please let me know how the game works for you after the update.