I built a Shakespeare iOS app and am looking for honest feedback
Hey everyone,
I’m a solo indie iOS developer and longtime Shakespeare fan, and I recently released an app called The Bard’s World: Shakespeare.
Please, if you dislike the app or this post, I ask only one thing:
Deliver your criticism in the form of a Shakespearean insult.
App Store link (only on iOS for now)
I originally started building it because most Shakespeare apps felt either:
- too academic,
- outdated,
- or just giant walls of text.
So I tried to create something that feels more like an interactive Shakespeare universe than a traditional study app.
Some of the things included:
- all 37 plays + 154 sonnets
- AI chats with 50 Shakespeare characters
- Shakespearean insult generator
- relationship maps
- interactive map of locations from the plays
- daily quotes and trivia
- iambic pentameter scanner
- vocabulary explorer
- study guides and scene navigation
A few things I cared about a lot:
- everything works offline
- no ads
- no tracking
- no account required
- no subscriptions
The AI character chats also run fully on-device because I really wanted the app to feel private and self-contained.
I’d genuinely love feedback from people who enjoy Shakespeare, literature, theatre, classics, or educational apps.
Some things I’m wondering:
- Which feature sounds genuinely useful vs gimmicky?
- Is the “chat with Hamlet/Lady Macbeth/etc.” idea compelling?
- What would make you actually keep an app like this installed long-term?
- Are there features students/teachers would want that I’m missing?
I’m trying to improve it based on real feedback instead of just building in isolation.
Happy to answer any questions about the app or the development process too.