u/foxrlz

Hey everyone! 

I'm a solo dev and I just shipped Mini Pong to the Mac App Store a couple of days ago. It's a small Pong arcade that sits in your menu bar for those 30 second gaps between builds, deploys, or while your AI model thinks. Or maybe you're just waiting for your boss on a Zoom call 😅

Someone on r/macapps called it "a fidget spinner for programmers" and honestly that's the best description I could ever come up with.

WHY

I kept waiting around during compile breaks and LLM responses. Too short to do anything useful, too long to just stare at the terminal. And every time I opened Twitter (yes, Twitter) or YouTube to kill time, 20 minutes disappeared. I needed something I could jump into and out of in seconds.

FEATURES

• Menu bar only, no Dock icon, click to play, click to pause
• 5 difficulty levels (Zen to Nightmare)
• 8 game modes (Normal, Wobble, Mirror, Gravity, Chaos...)
• 8 themes named after popular code editor palettes (Monokai, Nord, Tokyo Night, Solarized...)
• Zen mode: no scoring, no game over, just chill
• Full keyboard support (arrow keys, A/D) and game controller support (Xbox, PS5, Switch Pro)
• Adjustable ball speed in real-time with scroll wheel, keyboard +/- or controller bumpers (0.25x to 5x)
• Stealth mode: press F to instantly hide the game, mute sound, and swap the icon to something productive 👀
• Configurable frame rate (60-240Hz)
• Trackpad haptic feedback 🤌
• Global shortcut to toggle from anywhere
• Localized in 8 languages
• Game Center Leaderboards (today in v1.4)
• No internet, no analytics, zero data collected

Almost every feature since the release came directly from user suggestions:

>"Is it mouse-control only, or can you use the keyboard?" -> Added keyboard + full controller support in v1.1

>"Great for secretly using at work!!" -> Built Stealth Mode in v1.1 (press F to instantly hide everything)

>"Idea, make the mouse scroll adjust the ball speed" -> Added real-time speed control in v1.3

>"It's like a fidget spinner for programmers" -> Became the actual tagline

Right now, in version 1.4 (pushed today to App Store), I implemented leaderboards with Game Center. I know it's a bit overkill for a Mini Pong menu bar game, but why not?

$1.99 lifetime on the Mac App Store 

And I'm waiting for any further feedback to improve the app even more. 

Edit: I forgot to mention that I'm working on other mini-games for the menu bar (which also came up as ideas in the macapps post). If you have any in mind, feel free to share your idea.

Hey everyone!

I've been working on a small Pong game and just shipped it to the Mac App Store.

Problem
I kept waiting around during compile breaks and LLM responses while coding. Too short to do anything useful, too long to just stare at the terminal. And tbh, I prefer gaming to social media.

Compare
There are a few menu bar games but I couldn't find one that you could jump into and pause this quickly between tasks. Mini Pong is a full Pong arcade designed for exactly that.

Core features
Lives in the menu bar, no Dock icon, pauses on click
5 difficulty levels (Zen to Nightmare)
8 game modes (Wobble, Mirror, Gravity, Chaos...)
8 dev-friendly themes (Monokai, Nord, Tokyo Night, Solarized...)
Zen mode with no scoring
Global shortcut to toggle from anywhere
Localized in 8 languages
No internet, no analytics, no data collected

Edit: Also, I totally forgot to put this in the description earlier, but it has haptic feedback for MacBook trackpads! You can feel every hit. I know, the level of detail and juicyness is probably overkill, but I really wanted anyone who spent those 2 bucks to feel like it was money well spent.

Pricing
$1.99 on the Mac App Store

This is my first app. It passed Apple's review on the first try, but the EU compliance review took a few extra hours. Being a solo dev in Spain and not being able to install your own app while the rest of the world can is a special kind of frustration 😅 It's now available everywhere!

Not sure if a mini game belongs here, but this is the sub I check regularly and Mini Pong feels more like a minimal menu bar utility that happens to be a game than a game itself.

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Edit: v1.1 is now live on the App Store! Added keyboard controls (arrow keys/AD), full game controller support (Xbox/PS/Switch with adaptive button hints), and Stealth Mode (press F to instantly hide everything). Thanks for all the feedback, these features came directly from your suggestions.

Edit 2: v1.2 is now live! It includes the new menu bar icon (no more confusion with the Game Mode indicator), a mute indicator during gameplay, punchier score animations, and smoother paddle transitions.

Edit 3: v1.3 live with real-time ball speed control (scroll wheel/+/-/controller bumpers), frame rate selector (60-240Hz), full controls help screen (press H), and a bunch of audio and stability fixes.

Edit 4: v1.4 It's already been submitted to the App Store, and includes features like ranked mode (and leaderboards with Game Center), as well as some logic fixes for this mode and basic quality-of-life improvements.