Software workshop · London

Built to run
without a signal

Railworks Maintenance builds small, self-contained software for Android. Everything we ship works with the aeroplane mode switch on, because software that stops working when the connection drops was never really yours.

01 / Standing orders

Rules we do not argue about

Four positions settled early, so we do not relitigate them every time a feature request arrives.

Order one

The device is the server

What you make in our apps stays on the hardware you made it on. No backend means no outage, no breach, no migration email announcing that things are changing. It also means we cannot look at your data, which is the point.

Order two

Difficulty, not friction

A game should be hard because the opponent is good, not because the interface is slow or a timer is holding your turn hostage. We spend our effort on the opponent and almost none on ways to make waiting feel important.

Order three

Every permission is a debt

The manifest is reviewed line by line before each submission. If we cannot justify an access request in one plain sentence to someone who does not write software, the feature that needed it gets cut instead.

Order four

Finished, then quiet

An app that is done should stop asking for attention. We fix what breaks and add what is genuinely missing, and otherwise we leave it alone. Not every release cycle needs a release.

02 / Current release

Saltvolley

Two grids, two hidden fleets, one rule — find them before they find you. Built around an opponent that actually hunts.

Strategy · Android · Offline

Saltvolley

Find the fleet. Sink it first.

  • 01Place your fleet by hand — drag, rotate, undo, or let the randomiser do it
  • 02Hits, misses and sinkings tracked separately, so the board narrows as you play
  • 03An opponent that works outward from a hit and follows the shape of what it wounded
  • 04Difficulty from a casual gunner up to a hunter that wastes almost nothing
  • 05Pass-and-play duel on a single phone, with the screen hidden between turns
  • 06Statistics kept across games, on the device and nowhere else
com.deepgridworks.saltvolley Privacy policy
03 / Dry dock

What is on the slipway

Work in progress, with an honest sense of how far along it is. Nothing here carries a promised date — it launches when it floats.

Harder hunter

Testing · 80%

A fourth difficulty tier that reasons about which placements remain possible rather than only working outward from hits. Currently beating everyone in the workshop, which is either a good sign or a bad one.

Fleet presets

In build · 45%

Saved placements you can recall instead of laying out ten ships from scratch every match. Sounds trivial, turns out to touch the whole placement screen.

Match history

Design · 20%

A record of past duels with the final board state, so you can look back at where the fleet was actually hiding. Still deciding how much detail is interesting and how much is clutter.

Second title

Notes only · 5%

Early sketches for another single-device strategy game. Nothing decided, nothing announced, and possibly nothing at all.

04 / Log book

How the workshop runs

Not a timeline of milestones — a description of the actual working method, which is duller and more useful.

Kotlin. Current stable Android APIs, no cross-platform layer between us and the device.

Jetpack Compose. Standard components where they fit, custom drawing only where a grid genuinely needs it.

On device. No backend, no accounts, no sync service, nothing of yours in a database of ours.

Real phones. Every build spends a week in daily use before it is considered for release.

When ready. No fixed cadence. A month with no release means nothing needed fixing.

One inbox. Read by the people who wrote the code, answered within five working days.

05 / Signals

Questions we get

Does Saltvolley need an internet connection?

No. The opponent runs on your phone, so the game works in aeroplane mode, on the underground, and on a flight. There is no online multiplayer and no matchmaking queue.

Is the AI cheating? It always finds my ships.

It does not see your board. It fires blind until something connects, then works the neighbouring squares and follows the orientation of the ship it wounded — the same method a strong human player uses. On the highest difficulty it also avoids squares where no remaining ship could physically fit, which is legal and does feel unfair.

Can two people play on one phone?

Yes. Pass-and-play hands the device between two players with a covering screen between turns, so neither sees the other's placement.

Where are my statistics stored?

In the app's private storage on your own device. They are not uploaded anywhere, which also means they do not survive a reinstall or move to a new phone.

Are there ads or purchases?

No advertising and no in-app purchases in the current release. If that ever changes, the privacy policy will be updated before the release goes out, not after.

Which Android versions do you support?

Several versions back from current stable. We drop an old release only when a platform change makes supporting it unsafe or impossible, and we say so in the release notes when we do.

How do I report a bug?

Email us with your device model, Android version, and what you were doing when it went wrong. That trio usually cuts a day off finding the cause.

06 / Ship's papers

Who we are, formally

Contact

Bug reports, press enquiries, questions about your data, or anything covered in the privacy policy. One address, read by the people who build the apps.

rail@railworksmaintenance.work

Press & company

Reviewers may use our studio name, app names and store screenshots without asking. For a review build or higher-resolution artwork, email us and say what you are writing.

Legal entity
RAILWORKS MAINTENANCE LTD
Jurisdiction
England and Wales
Director
Mark Andrew Rees
Current release
Saltvolley (Android)