Announcing Berroku

I've been quietly working on something for the last few months, and today I'm finally shipping it: Berroku, a berry-themed logic puzzle for iPhone and iPad. Think Sudoku, but with a sprinkle of Minesweeper.

The Berroku home screen, showing today's daily puzzles and the current streak

What is Berroku?

Sudoku gives you the grid. Minesweeper gives you the clues. Berroku takes both, swaps the numbers for berries, and turns the result into the kind of puzzle I find myself reaching for on the train or in the queue at a coffee shop.

The rules are simple:

  • Place exactly 3 berries in every row.
  • Place exactly 3 berries in every column.
  • Place exactly 3 berries in every block.
  • Numbered clues tell you how many of the 8 surrounding cells contain a berry.

The numbers are your insight into the grid, and chasing them down to a solution is genuinely satisfying.

A Berroku puzzle in its starting state, with numbered clues scattered across the grid

Three new puzzles drop every day for free, across Standard, Advanced, and Expert difficulties. There's a streak system, Game Center achievements and leaderboards, a home screen widget, and full offline play. If you really get the bug, there's a one-time Pro unlock that opens up more puzzles.

A Berroku puzzle mid-solve, with berries placed and the surrounding clues partially satisfied

Built with Claude Code

Here's the part that I think is most interesting: I built almost all of Berroku with Claude Code, with just a sprinkling of handwritten changes where I wanted to nudge things in a particular direction.

I used the Opus 4.7 (1M Context) model throughout. The 1M context window earned its keep on a project like this — the iOS app, the marketing site, and the App Store metadata all sat comfortably in scope without me having to shuffle things around.

It wasn't a single prompt or a single sitting. The UI went through a handful of looks before I settled on something that felt right on a small iPhone screen and on iPad. The widget, achievements, and Game Center integration each needed their own focused passes. My role through all of it felt more like a director than an author.

Relearning App Store Connect

The one part of this project that absolutely was not vibes-and-AI was App Store Connect. I haven't shipped an iOS app in years, and walking back into it in 2026 was its own little adventure — provisioning profiles, capabilities, screenshots at the right device sizes, privacy declarations, the lot.

I got there in the end, but if you're dipping your toes back into iOS after a long break: budget more time for the paperwork than you think you need. The code is the easy bit now.

Launching on Product Hunt

Berroku is also live on Product Hunt today. If you'd like to try it, leave feedback, or just throw an upvote at it, I'd really appreciate it.

If you spot something weird, have an idea for a feature, or just want to brag about your streak, please let me know. And if you end up building something with Claude Code off the back of this, I'd genuinely love to hear about it.

Happy berry-placing.