currently: shipping Tactus, wrestling zombies

Apps and games, built solo, on evenings and weekends.

I'm Jon — a casual developer making things I actually want to use. Sometimes that's a metronome. Sometimes it's a city full of zombies that judges me from my second monitor. casual.fridays is where it all lands.

Shipped · iOS & Apple Watch

Tactus

Tactus app icon — a dark glass metronome with a glowing amber needle Tactus tuner screen on iPhone, showing standard tuning and a cents-deviation meter
Free · No ads · No IAP

A precision metronome, tuner, and stage monitor for musicians who take practice seriously. Started as something I built for myself — grew into something I'm genuinely proud of.

  • High-precision metronome, 40–240 BPM, 9 time signatures
  • Auto-detect BPM by holding your phone near live music
  • Play-along drift meter — see if you're rushing or dragging
  • FFT chromatic tuner, 11 presets, reliable low-string detection
  • Stage monitor: mic passthrough with 3-band EQ
  • Full Apple Watch companion with haptic beat feedback
In development · Unity (previously Unreal) ● Actively being poked at

Safe Zone

A Frostpunk/Banished-inspired survival city-builder, in development on and off since 2020 — mostly off, if we're being honest. Build farms, houses, walls and watchtowers, manage happiness and resources, research new tech, and try not to lose everyone to the horde outside.

Started in Unreal Engine 5, now built in Unity — after one too many nights losing to Blueprints instead of making progress, I ported the whole thing over. Best decision I made on this project. Full story in the devlog →

It has a full loop now — including a proper way to lose. Last playtest: 23 days survived, just under 9 hours played, died with 4,121 wood and zero food. Poetic, in its own way.

Zero art pass. All placeholder geometry. Systems before shine — it's the only way I've ever actually finished anything.

Safe Zone screenshot — base layout with resource panel Safe Zone screenshot — research tree Safe Zone screenshot — tool crafting and tier progression Safe Zone screenshot — fully manned guard tower minimap Safe Zone screenshot — game over screen with run statistics
From the devlog

Recent entries

6 Aug 2026 New Look, New Home (And a Confession About "Starting Small") If you're reading this, the site finally looks like it's from this decade. WordPress served me well for a long time, but between plugin bloat, update fatigue, a… 7 Apr 2026 Introducing Tactus! Tactus is a precision metronome and music toolkit for iPhone and Apple Watch. It's free — no ads, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases — and I intend to keep i… 2 Mar 2026 Back at It: Adventures in Actually Making a Game So, it's been a while. Life happened, motivation ebbed and flowed, and my zombie city-builder sat there patiently judging me from my second monitor. But I'm hap…
All entries →
Where it started

Earlier releases

2020

The King Stag

My first mobile release — a silly game built to inject a bit of extra fun into your evening out.

Read the story →
2019

Alexa Skill

While the bigger projects were still spinning up, I shipped a small skill for Alexa-enabled devices — my first published thing, ever.

Enable it →