The mobile gaming industry accounts for 60% of the total gaming market today. In addition, the advancements in mobile games have expanded the possibilities of the type of games you can play on mobile.
From essential gaming apps like Sudoku, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Tetris, to complex gaming apps like Asphalt, PUBG, and Infinity Blade, there is a lot of diversity in the mobile gaming industry. And in the overall mobile game industry, the iOS gaming industry has boomed significantly. As a result, gaming is the most popular app category on the Apple App Store.
The competition in the gaming app space on Apple App Store is intense. Hence, if you are looking to develop an iOS gaming app, you will need to ensure your game is developed with the highest quality and the best coding practices in place.
Ideally, you should hire iOS developers from a trusted app development agency with a proven record of developing custom gaming app solutions in their portfolio. However, if you are looking for some basic tips and tricks to build a successful iOS game, we have you covered.
5 best practices for successful iOS game development
Here are some of the industry-grade best practices, tips, and tricks you can follow and implement in your iOS game app development process –
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Understand your Game Category
When you start developing your game, you should first understand what game category your app belongs to. Then you should look for competitors making similar games or targeting similar audiences. Download their games and try to understand the plus points and the negative attributes of those apps. This will give you an insight into what features should be in your app and what features can be avoided. It will also give you ideas for improvising the overall user experience of your iOS gaming application.
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Keep Memory Consumption in check.
Your iOS game needs to be economical on the load it puts on the user’s device. Remember, smartphones and tablets are multi-app devices where users have at least 3-4 apps running in the background. If your game hordes a lot of space on the user’s device memory, it would hamper the performance of other apps.
One way to limit the iOS game’s memory consumption is to avoid using the png loading function in Apple GLSprite Demo. Using that feature consumes a lot of memory, slowing your app performance. You should also crop the sprites in your game accurately.
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Avoid overstuffing your game.
Filling your game with too many cool animations, features, and music might sound very tempting. However, overdoing it will only increase your app size and make game navigation confusing for users.
Your aim should be to provide a seamless and rich gaming experience to the user and not provide as many features to the users as possible. Keep that in mind, and find a balance between the core features and decorative elements of your iOS gaming app.
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Don’t overly depend on third-party libraries.
Using third-party libraries to learn iOS game development is excellent. However, using many third-party libraries for an iOS gaming app project isn’t the wisest decision. It can cause security issues and cause your app to crash often since your app performance will depend on how your third-party libraries manage their libraries.
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Select the right game development platform
To build an efficient game app, you must select the most suitable software platform. An excellent way to implement this is by understanding all features you will need in your game development platform. Then, after analyzing your app thoroughly, you should check which game platform is best suited for your project.
Some of the popular game development platforms you can consider are –
LiveCode: This powerful coding platform is helpful for creating powerful native gaming apps. It comes packed with various extensions, features, and libraries.
GameMaker: this is one of the most used gaming platforms by Android and iOS developers. Developers can create an end-to-end game with a simple drag-and-drop builder.
Stencyl: this is an ideal game development platform for people with no coding skills. It has a very easy-to-understand and uses user interface.
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Separate Game Content from Game Mechanics
When developing an iOS game, you need to be very clear about the difference in concepts of game content and game mechanics. For instance, actions like jumping and running can be “controlled” by the user. Since the character can jump, the mechanics of gravity will be applied to the character.
All this and other variables like the movement of enemies and user input to control the character fall under Game Mechanics. Your Game Content will be how you plan the game, for instance, the different levels of your game. If a game has ten game levels, then that app will have a lot of game content, but the game mechanic of all levels will be the same. When developing a complex gaming app, you should focus on game mechanics and not game content.
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Make use of helpful iOS game development tools.
You don’t need to be a one-person show and complex code everything from scratch without using any tools. Many iOS game development tools, engines, frameworks, and more can ease your iOS game development process.
Moreover, these tools are designed in a way that they adhere to most apple gaming guidelines, so using them guarantees your gaming app is built with the highest quality. Here are some of the reliable game development tools you can use –
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Unreal Development Kit: Unreal is a gaming engine for mobile games. It is ideal for games that require 3D stimulation.
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Unity Mobile: is an advanced mobile gaming engine that is most widely and popular used.
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Sparrow: Sparrow is a free and open-source game development tool for Objective-C.
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Newton: rich library for different kinds of physics simulation.
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Oolong: free engine for developing and exporting iOS gaming apps.
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iTorque: open-source game editor for all types of iOS gaming apps.
Final Words
These are the seven best practices for successful iOS game development. Hire dedicated developers who can assist you in your iOS game development project and ensure they follow such practices to provide a high quality of your game application.
Ronak Patel is a CEO and Founder of Aglowid IT Solutions, an ever-emerging Top Web and Mobile Development company with a motto of turning clients into successful businesses. He believes that Client’s success is company’s success and so that he always makes sure that Aglowid helps their client’s business to reach to its true potential with the help of his best team with the standard development process he set up for the company.
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