A playground for grown-ups.

Gonecase is an iOS and Android app for adults who were told they aren't creative: short stories, word games and a daily writing prompt. We grew it out of StorySurf's reading app, in Flutter.

If you're alive, you're creative.

commits by us, prototype to handover: 216
screens in the app: 42
word games, one play a day: 3
automated tests at handover: 290
first prototype to handover: DecMay

Read. Play. Gather. Imagine.

A few minutes a day for people tired of productivity and doomscrolling: a short story, a word game, a writing prompt. Nothing to keep up with, nobody judging.

Think
Short reads for the shortest attention span: Articles, Accidents and Ahas!
Play
Three word games you play with Gonecase. One play a day.
Gather
Workshops and courses led by experts who teach creativity, creatively.
Imagine
A new writing prompt every day. Up to 300 words, just for you.

A playground for grown ups

I will not be optimized, monetized, or compartmentalized.
I will not create for claps, likes, or algorithms.
I will play pointless games with no points.
I will honour the weirdos who made this playground.
And I'm finally home.

From the manifesto card on the Gonecase home screen.

What you won't find in Gonecase

Ads
Likes
Comments
Critics
Public profiles

Your writing stays on your phone unless you share it. Gonecase is paid for by a subscription, not by ads or your data.

"You're the creator, not the product."

The opposite of stuck is play.

Three word games you write together with Gonecase. One play a day, so there is always a reason to come back tomorrow.

Duets
You write a line, We write one too. Just in 20 lines, A story comes through.
1. YouHe opened the door and immediately regretted it.
2. GonecaseOn the welcome mat was a fish wearing his socks.
3. YouHe blinked twice. The fish did not.
4. Gonecase"You're late," it said, in his mother's voice.
Name Place Animal Thing
Spin for a letter, Write four words that fit. Create something for the better Using all of it.
Name
Meena
Place
Morocco
Animal
Monkey
Thing
Mirror
90 seconds for four words. Run out of time and Gonecase fills in the gaps, then you write a short story that uses all four.
Partner in Rhyme
Pick an emotion, Find it a rhyme. Throw all caution, Let's have fun this time.
Emotion: Sad. Each line ends on a rhyme word from Gonecase.A pirate was lost at sea,
Searching for a treasure and its key.
He longed for a sail,
And told quite a tale,
But the treasure was love, he didn't see.

Gonecase's replies are written by AI on Gonecase's own server. In the app we built the games around them: the flows, the letter wheel and the timer, the one-play-a-day limit, and the "Your Creation" card you can edit, share as an image or email to yourself. The hardest part: every game had to follow Gonecase's own rules exactly, to the letter.

Read it. Save it. Brainfart it.

Every story comes with four small buttons. A Brainfart is Gonecase's word for your own note on what you just read: five gentle questions, every one of them skippable, kept on your phone.

A short story open in Gonecase: the title, the author's name and three round buttons

ThinkStories in four tabs, each card in its own colour.
ImagineToday's Spark: a prompt, 300 words, then admire it or share it.
Emo LogOne mood a day, a card for the week.

Call your day by its name.

Five moods, one tap. The Emo Log keeps them on the phone, with week and month views and an optional daily reminder.

Same codebase. New app.

StorySurf became Gonecase

"Gonecase began as a home for stories. But stories were only the beginning. What we're building now is a playground for imagination itself."
Welcome to Gonecase. Again.

From the app's "Change is Good" screen

2021We build StorySurf's Flutter app from day one: short stories to read.
Dec 2025Gonecase is prototyped on a StorySurf branch: the games, Imagine, Emo Log, Horsescope, Fictionary.
Mar 2026Its own repository, and the app is renamed Gonecase.
May 2026Handover to Gonecase's in-house team, 216 commits in.

What we built, in plain words.

The Gonecase app, from the first prototype to the handover. We kept what worked in StorySurf and built the rest around it. Two of our mobile developers, from start to handover.

One Flutter app for iOS and AndroidGrown out of StorySurf's code, not rewritten. Most of its files carried over.
42 screens that stay predictableClean Architecture, 45 Blocs and Cubits, dependency injection and generated code for models, routes and the API client.
Sign in three waysA one-time email code, Google or Apple. Session tokens sit in the phone's secure storage.
Subscriptions, no card dataApp Store and Google Play billing through RevenueCat, restore purchases and the playful paywall flow.
Private by defaultSaves, Brainfarts, the Emo Log, today's Spark and your creations are stored on the phone.
Light and darkTwo themes, each with its own drawings, and one text size setting for the whole app.
Links that landA shared story opens straight on that story in the app.
Crashes and numbersFirebase Crashlytics (we moved crash reports there from Sentry), a consent screen with App Tracking Transparency on iOS, push and local reminders.
290 automated tests31 test files at handover, up from 17 when the new repository started.
Shipped to both storesWe released the app and each new version to the App Store and Google Play.
Not ours: the backend and the AI behind Gonecase's replies are built by Gonecase's own team; the app talks to them over a typed REST client. Since May 2026 their in-house developers carry the app on.