Saturday, August 1, 2026
Get Floor Is Lava on Google Play
Approved for production
The day started with the news: Floor Is Lava had been approved for production on Google Play, clearing the way to actually sell it. It came through faster than expected; a friend had warned it usually took about three days.
“I checked my app, and Floor Is Lava has finally been approved for production, so I can now sell it on the app store. That’s a nice success, it didn’t take too long.”
The rest of the afternoon was Lance’s: a friend’s birthday party, jumping castle included.
Publishing, for real
By evening it was back to the last of the bug-fixing, with a short list for the night: finish up any last Floor Is Lava issues, get a couple of Loomwave videos out, and catch up on diary audio. Before touching publish, there was time for a bit of research into promotional formats; playable ads came up as the top-converting format in mobile gaming, the idea being a sixty-second taste of the real game running as an ad between other games.
Then, at around 11:00 p.m., it happened.
“The big thing is that by 11 p.m. I had published my Floor Is Lava app online, so now millions of people can see Floor Is Lava, and they can download it if they want.”
Building a playable ad
Straight after publishing, the night pivoted into building a playable ad version of the game: and it turned out to be more addictive than the real thing. Press play, a parachute drops through the sky collecting a spiral of coins, then you land on a platform and start auto-jumping without touching a button. Touch the lava and Scorcha’s lava-ship shows up, chasing you upward while firing rockets, keeping the same distance the whole climb. Survive ten seconds and you “Escape Floor Is Lava”; get caught and it prompts you to install the full game or try again.
The rocket-trail effect on Scorcha’s ship looked good enough in the playable that it went straight onto the list to add to the real game too.
Game Rules Log: August 1, 2026 (playable ad concept)
- Playable ad: parachute drop collecting an S-shaped coin trail, then automatic jumping with no button presses
- Touch lava in the playable: Scorcha’s lava-ship appears and chases upward, firing rockets, holding a constant distance
- Survive 10 seconds in the playable: “Escaped Floor Is Lava” win state; otherwise a lose state with an install/replay prompt
- Rocket exhaust trail on the lava ship earmarked to bring into the full game
AdMob approval and a trailer
Just after 2:00 a.m., AdMob approval came through too; the app was verified, clearing the way to actually serve ads. The rest of the night went into Claude Design storyboards: 12-second vertical video scenes animated using the game’s own visuals, stitched together into a proper trailer. Not real gameplay footage, but close enough; exhaust fumes trailing off the lava ship, coins spiralling down in parachute mode, all the small touches that make a trailer feel like the finished product.
Photos from today
Milestone: Floor Is Lava published live on Google Play, ~11:00 p.m.
Read what happens next in the dev diary: the next entry.
Diary Of A Mad Chaos is a daily diary written from March 1996 until today, of which individual books and book series have been created, namely “The Lost Years” an exploration of young, entwined love, the “Wubao In China (猎艳奇缘)” book series which provides an extensive comparative analysis of the cultural differences between Eastern and Western societies, and the book titled “Foreigner (华人)” an exploration of race relations in Australia.
