Beating App Store review: lessons from shipping a minimal indie game

Shipping a small, focused app on the App Store sounds straightforward: build the app, make sure it works, submit it, done. That was my assumption when I finished my first iOS game — a minimal, offline, pixel‑art push‑box puzzle inspired by classic warehouse logic games. What followed instead was a multi‑week back‑and‑forth with App Store Review, several rejections, and a slow realization that…