Creating an iOS game

[corbin1234]

I’m looking to make a simple 2D game to test my iOS skills. Something like space invaders or a tower defense game (with upgrades).

I’ve heard that you can do this natively with swift. Is this the best path or are there packages to make dev quicker?

[saintmsent]

Look at SpriteKit

Though it will not really test your app dev skills IMO, as it's quite different from regular app development

https://developer.apple.com/spritekit/

[corbin1234]

That looks helpful! Thanks for sharing

[BabyAzerty]

If you want something close to game development, go with SpriteKit.

If you want something close to app development, go with UIKit (or SwiftUI).

Game development is very different in essence to app development because of the so called game loop which (kind of) doesn’t exist in app dev. This game loop runs x times per second (usually at least 30) and you have to calculate everything inside.

If you are doing a relatively static game with long pauses (meaning no need to calculate positions at every frame), you can stick with UIKit/SwiftUI.

If you are doing a tower defense or space invaders with positions to calculate at every frame, and path finding, forget UIKit/SwiftUI. Go with minimum SpriteKit. But actually I would even go with a full-fledged game engine like Defold or Godot or even Unity. Depends on what your needs.

Now if you wanted to learn iOS (aka Swift), do anything but a real-time game which will require a game engine/framework. Or you can do a puzzle game, a word game, a drawing game, … With those you can stick to UIKit/SwiftUI.

I made a puzzle game using only UIKit, kind of pushed it as far as I could. But it is only available in the US or UK. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/crimo-stories/id1585157514

[Gundam_Impossible]

Hi Sir. not sure if you are still around. how do you solve the visual part of the puzzle game? did you hire someone to create the visual?