{"id":135630,"date":"2025-04-08T13:00:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=sqd5xv4n"},"modified":"2025-04-08T13:00:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T13:00:03","slug":"rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2025\/04\/08\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description\/","title":{"rendered":"Rooms at the top: How this ADA-winning team built a title that defies description"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"inline-article-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description.jpg\" data-img-dark=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description.jpg\" data-hires=\"false\" alt=\"A series of iPhones, all showing different screens from Rooms, in a diagonal floating layout against a deep purple background.\"><\/div>\n<p>Ask Jason Toff whether his Apple Design Award winner is a game or an app, and his answer is yes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s no one-sentence description for <em>Rooms<\/em>, and that can be a blessing,\u201d laughs Toff, CEO and head designer of Things, Inc. \u201cIt\u2019s not entirely a game, and it\u2019s not entirely a tool. It\u2019s more like a toy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also a blank canvas, cozy game, coding teacher, and social network \u2014 but we\u2019re getting ahead of ourselves. At its heart, <em>Rooms<\/em> is a collection of user-generated 3-D spaces that feels like the open-ended world of the early internet. Start with an empty room or existing template, then fill it with an array of voxel decorations, items, pets, and avatars to create whatever space you like: a college apartment, medieval castle chamber, floating fantasy realm, pirate ship, or a Weezer concert (really), to name just a few. The only limits are the room\u2019s boundaries \u2014 and <em>Rooms<\/em> fans have even gotten around those. \u201cOur 404 page is a room with no walls,\u201d Toff says, \u201cso people just started copying it to work around the constraint.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p class=\"sosumi margin-top-small\">ADA FACT SHEET<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-article-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description-1.jpg\" data-img-dark=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description-1.jpg\" data-hires=\"false\" alt=\"A screenshot from Rooms, showing a cluttered dorm room in voxel-art style. A loft bed, bookshelf, and assorted books and decorations can be seen in the room.\"><\/div>\n<h3>Rooms<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Winner:<\/strong> Visuals and Graphics<\/li>\n<li><strong>Team:<\/strong> Things, Inc.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Available on:<\/strong> iOS, iPadOS<\/li>\n<li><strong>Team size:<\/strong> 4<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/things.inc\/rooms\" class=\"icon icon-after icon-chevronright\">Learn more about Rooms<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apps.apple.com\/us\/app\/rooms\/id6443548715\" class=\"icon icon-after icon-chevronright\">Download Rooms from the App Store<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In fact, that community element is a strong point: This creative tapestry of quirky games, tranquil havens, and clever ideas has been conjured by real people, which makes <em>Rooms<\/em> a social network as well. What\u2019s more, users can click on each item to reveal its underlying code, offering them more options for customization.<\/p>\n<p>To create <em>Rooms<\/em> \u2014 which, incidentally, won the ADA for Visuals and Graphics in games \u2014 Toff and cofounders Nick Kruge and Bruno Oliveira threw themselves back into their childhoods. \u201cI was obsessed with Legos as a kid,\u201d says Toff, not unexpectedly. \u201cI found myself wondering, \u2018What\u2019s the digital equivalent of that?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-article-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description-2.jpg\" data-img-dark=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description-2.jpg\" data-hires=\"false\" alt=\"A screenshot from Rooms, showing a bowl of ramen on a table in a restaurant. Around it are other bowls and a tray of toppings.\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"typography-caption\">\n<p><em>Rooms<\/em> isn\u2019t just about rooms; creators have plenty of ways to noodle on their ideas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Drawing on that inspiration \u2014 as well as Toff\u2019s experiences with <em>Kid Pix<\/em> on his dad\u2019s 1989-era Mac \u2014 the <em>Rooms<\/em> team began envisioning something that, as Oliveira says, kept the floor low but the ceiling high. \u201cWe wanted anyone from 4-year-olds to their grandparents to be able to use <em>Rooms<\/em>,\u201d he says, \u201cand that meant making something free-form and creative.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It also meant building something that gave a sense of approachability and creativity, which led them right to voxels. \u201cBlocks have a charm, but they can also be kind of ugly,\u201d Toff laughs. \u201cLuckily, Bruno\u2019s were cute and soft, so they felt approachable and familiar.\u201d And from Oliveira\u2019s side, blocks offered a practical value. \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to do 3-D modeling with blocks,\u201d says Oliveira. \u201cYou can just add or remove voxels whenever you want, which lowers the bar for everyone.\u201d <\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"article-quote\">\n<p>We wanted anyone from 4-year-olds to their grandparents to be able to use <em>Rooms<\/em>, and that meant making something free-form and creative.<\/p>\n<p><cite><\/p>\n<p>Jason Toff, CEO and head designer of Things, Inc.<\/p>\n<p><\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Rooms<\/em> launched in 2023 as a web-based app that included 1,000 voxel objects and allowed users to write their own code. It gained traction through both word of mouth and, more directly, a video that went viral in the cozy-gaming community. \u201cAll of a sudden, we had all these people coming,\u201d says Oliveira, \u201cand we realized we needed to prioritize the mobile app. Nick was like, \u2018I think we can get feature parity with desktop on the iPhone screen,\u2019 and we basically pulled a rabbit out of a hat.\u201d Today, the vast majority of <em>Rooms<\/em> users are on mobile, where they spend the bulk of their time editing. \u201cWe were just shocked by how much time people were spending making rooms,\u201d he says. \u201cThese weren\u2019t quick five-minute projects. We did not anticipate that.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-article-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description-3.jpg\" data-img-dark=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description-3.jpg\" data-hires=\"false\" alt=\"A rendering of the Things, Inc., offices in Rooms style. In the illustration, three voxel-art people sit at computers in a corner offices with windows overlooking a city.\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"typography-caption\">\n<p>Of course the Things, Inc. team rebuilt their own offices in <em>Rooms<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>All that building fed into a social aspect as well. Toff says most of the items in <em>Rooms<\/em> are now created, edited, and amplified by lots of different users. \u201cHere\u2019s a good example: We have a sway effect that makes things wave back and forth a little,\u201d he says. \u201cSomeone realized that if they put some branches on a tree and added that effect, the tree immediately looked alive. Now everyone\u2019s doing that. There\u2019s a real additive effect to building in Rooms.\u201d Today, the Rooms library contains more than 10,000 items.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a lot of power under the hood, too. \u201cRooms uses a Lua scripting language that runs in a C++ context,\u201d says Oliveira, \u201cso it\u2019s kind of Lua, encased in C++, encased in Unity, encased in iOS.\u201d Every room, he says, is a new Unity instance. And adding native iOS elements \u2014 like sliders on the Explore page and a bottom navigation \u2014 gives what he calls the \u201cdesign chef\u2019s kiss.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-article-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description-4.jpg\" data-img-dark=\"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rooms-at-the-top-how-this-ada-winning-team-built-a-title-that-defies-description-4.jpg\" data-hires=\"false\" alt=\"An early prototype of Rooms that shows a corner living room with blue walls and a blue floor. An orange ball sits on the floor, and a purple couch and lamp with yellow shade can be seen.\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"typography-caption\">\n<p>An early sketch of <em>Rooms<\/em> shows how the room design came together early in the process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Like its community, the <em>Rooms<\/em> team is used to moving fast. \u201cOne day I said, \u2018It would be cool if this had a D-pad and A\/B buttons,\u201d says Toff, \u201cand about 10 hours later Bruno was like, \u2018Here you go.\u2019\u201d On another lark, Toff mentioned that it would be fun to let users fly around their rooms, and Kruge and Oliveira promptly created a \u201ccamera mode\u201d that\u2019s come to be known internally as the \u201cJason-Cam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s satisfying to a team that simply set out to build a cutting-edge plaything. \u201cWe always had this metaphor that Rooms was a swimming pool with a shallow side and a deep side,\u201d says Oliveira. \u201cIt should be fun for people dabbling in the shallow side. But it should also be amazing for people swimming in the deep end. If you just want to look at rooms, you can. But you can also dive all the way down and write complicated code. There\u2019s something for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/design\/awards\/\" class=\"icon icon-after icon-chevronright\">Meet the 2024 Apple Design Award winners<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"sosumi margin-top-small\"><em>Behind the Design is a series that explores design practices and philosophies from finalists and winners of the Apple Design Awards. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how they brought their remarkable creations to life.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ask Jason Toff whether his Apple Design Award winner is a game or an app, and his answer is yes. \u201cThere\u2019s no one-sentence description for Rooms, and that can be a blessing,\u201d laughs Toff, CEO and head designer of Things, Inc. \u201cIt\u2019s not entirely a game, and it\u2019s not entirely a tool. It\u2019s more like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apple-developer-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}