In January I decided to try and write my first iOS game. Inspired by our new home in Switzerland and the movie North Face, I decided that it would be a mountain climbing game. To keep things as simple as possible, it will be written in Swift using SpriteKit. Graphics will be done in a pixel art style. My son will be helping me with art and game play ideas.
Why a game? Because I’ve always loved (retro) games, and I want to challenge myself with something new and learn frameworks and tools that I’ve never had occasion to use. Initially I thought I would open source the game (indeed it was a public repo on GitHub until just recently), but I finally decided against that for now. Mostly because even if the game is destined to never earn a penny, it would still suck if someone copied it, cloned it, and submitted it to the App Store before me. Maybe I’ll consider open-sourcing it after the game is finished. Regardless, I hope to write about little development challenges I run into along the way. Indeed I am already behind in writing about the first of those.
I’ve also invited my friend and colleague, Ethan Mateja, to join me in working on the game. I enjoy working with him and I hope that between the two of us we can keep things moving forward and not let the project languish. To be honest I didn’t touch the game during the entire month of February. But it’s March now and I’m pushing forward again.
