Horizon: Idle Colony
The world ended in 2028: grow a single scavenger into a colony of five divisions that keeps producing while you are away.
Links go to the official store or developer page. Last verified Nov 8, 2026.
Where to play
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- View on the App StoreApp StoreReleasedFree-to-Play
Install from Apple's App Store on an iPhone or iPad.
Mobile · Apple App Store
About Horizon: Idle Colony
A post-apocalyptic idle colony builder for iPhone. The world ended in 2028 and you start with one Scavenger picking through the ruins, growing the colony into five Divisions (Craft, Explore, Basement, Defense and Promote), each with its own production chain of eleven generators in which every generator produces the one below it, until the numbers climb into the quadrillions and beyond. Kinfolks, the colony's people, power each expansion. You collect 95 Aspects, slightly altered versions of historical explorers, inventors, rulers and myths, by opening packages, then level them up and stack their bonuses. Each new Rank resets the colony but keeps your Aspects, XP and Shimmer; from Rank 6 there are timed operations, daily gifts and a 30-day reward track, and from Rank 8 limited-time events in which you build a colony against the clock and climb a group of 25 and a global ranking. The colony keeps producing offline, with a report on return, and the game has cloud saves, Game Center achievements and Home and Lock Screen widgets, in ten languages. The developer, Fırat Güney Köseoğlu, a brand and UI designer, calls it a first game and says almost everything in it was made with AI tools: Claude Code wrote the code, about 42,000 lines of TypeScript and Svelte wrapped for iOS with Capacitor (“I didn't type most of it, but I read a lot of it”), and the roughly 400 images were generated with ChatGPT and Canva, while the developer did the design, every decision, the prompts and the testing on a real phone. Free to play on the App Store, with optional in-app purchases and optional ads for boosts.
How it was built
Partially verifiedIn a post on r/aigamedev (12 Oct 2026, 11:55 UTC) the developer, a brand and UI designer and “not a game programmer”, says almost everything in the game was made with AI tools and lists: “Code: Claude Code. About 42k lines of TypeScript + Svelte, wrapped for iOS with Capacitor. I didn't type most of it, but I read a lot of it.” The developer kept 16 Markdown design documents (about 58,000 words) as the single source of truth, which the AI reads before changing anything so the economy stops drifting between sessions, and relied on tests “the AI can't talk its way around”, such as playing eight hours live and comparing the save with eight hours computed offline. Per the post, the AI fixed each real-device bug quickly once it was described but “never predicted any of them”. Art: about 400 images generated with ChatGPT and Canva; the 95 portraits share one prompt template.
TypeScript and Svelte, wrapped as an iOS app with Capacitor. The engine treats time as an ordered sequence of events (fixed one-second ticks and the ends of manually started cycles), so live play, offline catch-up and time warps run the same function and give the same result; even the randomness is deterministic per tick. An eight-hour catch-up takes about 300 ms on a Mac, per the developer's blog. The interface was built as measured grey boxes first and painted last, with metal frames drawn as 9-slice images; one script processes every image by its filename prefix (portraits, 9-slice pieces, backgrounds, characters, objects). The images, 95 character portraits, 55 generator icons, backgrounds, UI frames and event art, were generated with ChatGPT and Canva, the 95 portraits from one shared prompt template. The blog describes four bugs that appeared only on a real iPhone (production bars, a WebKit border-image glitch, a duplicate-save prompt caused by fractional milliseconds and silent audio after returning from the background) and their fixes. About a month of building was followed by almost two weeks of App Review.
- Engine / framework
- Svelte + Capacitor
- Languages
- TypeScript
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Initial build time
- About a month of building, then almost two weeks of App ReviewDeveloper ReportedReddit (u/Hefty_Case14)
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“Code: Claude Code. About 42k lines of TypeScript + Svelte, wrapped for iOS with Capacitor. I didn't type most of it, but I read a lot of it.”- I shipped an iOS idle game made almost entirely with AI tools (r/aigamedev)
- From Grey Boxes to a Colony: Building Horizon (developer's blog)
Verification notes: AI use from the developer's post on r/aigamedev by u/Hefty_Case14 (12 Oct 2026, 11:55 UTC) and the developer's replies, read from the Arctic Shift Reddit archive on 8 Nov 2026; the post links the developer's blog and, in a reply, the App Store listing (Turkish store). Engine, art pipeline and device bugs from the blog post “From Grey Boxes to a Colony: Building Horizon” (27 Sep 2026, by Fırat Güney Köseoğlu), which does not mention AI. Features, release date (9 Oct 2026), version 1.01 (12 Oct 2026), price, age rating (9+ on the US store page, which lists loot boxes and advertising; 4+ in Apple's lookup data), Game Center and in-app purchases from the App Store page and Apple's lookup data, read on 8 Nov 2026; the App Store developer and seller is “Fırat Guney KOSEOGLU”, whose seller website is guney.app, the blog's domain. The App Store showed an average of 3 from 2 ratings in the US store and 5 from 2 in the Turkish store (observed; not recorded as a metric). The numbers differ slightly between sources: the post gives 436 tests and about 400 images, the blog 430 tests and more than 250 painted illustrations; both are the developer's. “Almost everything” and “I didn't type most of it” are the developer's wording; no code share is stated in numbers. No team size or location is stated. The game was not played.
Development history
- Late September 2026
The developer submits the game to the App Store; it is rejected twice before approval because the reviewer could not find the in-app purchases.
Released on the App Store.
OfficialApple App StoreVersion 1.01 adds new offers and faster purchases; the developer describes the build on r/aigamedev the same day.
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
App Store (iOS)
Free to play; the US App Store page shows an age rating of 9+ (Apple's lookup data says 4+). In-app purchases on the US store run from $2.99 to $99.99 (Shimmer packs, offers and the Horizon Clearance pass), and optional ads give boosts or bonus rewards. The developer calls it iPhone only, and the App Store page says “Only for iPhone”.
Not publicly available: Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| I shipped an iOS idle game made almost entirely with AI tools. 95 character portraits in one style, and the parts that still took forever (r/aigamedev) Reddit (u/Hefty_Case14) | Social post | Oct 12, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| From Grey Boxes to a Colony: Building Horizon Güney (guney.app) | Devlog | Sep 27, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Horizon: Idle Colony on the App Store Apple App Store | Store page | Oct 9, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
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