The multiplayer platform is also highly scalable and responsive, as it employs automatic scaling (based on load) using Amazon’s EBS which is integrated with the game’s code, and uses Amazon’s high performance NoSQL database DynamoDB, to provide a lag free, multiplayer gaming experience. The multiplayer platform is also deeply integrated with Facebook and allows users to post their high scores and achievements on their Facebook profiles while also providing game matchmaking, by matching users against their Facebook friends.

To facilitate the game’s multiplayer mechanics, the Folio3 team also developed its own Apple Push Notification Server that manages all push notifications that need to be sent to users such as “Player1 is waiting for your move”, “Player 2 just sent you a new clue”, etc. This Push Notification Server also tracks and maintains the notification count shown in each player’s iPhone app, thereby eliminating the need for using third party services like Urban Airship.

Folio3’s team also created a separate client side iOS API for communicating with the multiplayer server, so that the entire multiplayer functionality is de-coupled from game’s code. This allowed Pelayo’s device side developers to save considerable time and effort in their iPhone game development as they only had to integrate this API in the game’s code for the multiplayer mechanics to work.

Thanks to Folio3’s iPhone game development efforts, Pelayo was able to deploy a custom made server side, multiplayer platform for its ClueDrop social word game that not only provides all the multiplayer features offered by Apple’s Game Center but also offers a more scalable and lag free multiplayer gaming solution that is tightly integrated with Facebook. All at a fraction of the cost required by third party multiplayer platforms such as Parse and Stackmob.