Overview
Resque is a survival city-builder developed for iPad that challenges players to rebuild a civilization shattered by seismic activity. To win, players must reach a target population goal while maintaining structural integrity through increasingly difficult earthquake rounds. It combines the strategic planning of a tycoon game with the tension of a survival simulator.
Gameplay Highlights
- Population Milestones: Strategically build housing to hit specific population targets required for victory.
- Economic Engine: Construct and manage business districts to fund city expansion and emergency services.
- Disaster Mitigation: Upgrade S&R centers, Hospitals, and Police Stations to protect your citizens and buildings during earthquake waves.
- Victory Conditions: Survival isn't enough; players must balance growth and safety to meet objectives before the final round concludes.
Tech Stack
- Engine: Unity
- Platform: iPadOS
- Version Control: Git LFS (Large File Storage)
My Role
As the Lead Developer, I managed a team of two other developers while overseeing the technical roadmap. My specific contributions included:
- Gameplay Architecture: Developed the core logic for the building systems, population scaling, and the earthquake "wave" mechanics.
- Team Management: Assigned and reviewed tasks for the development team, ensuring code consistency and feature alignment.
- DevOps & QA: Implemented Unit Testing to ensure game stability and established a CI/CD pipeline to automate builds.
- Release Management: Handled the end-to-end App Store submission process.
Learnings
- Unity vs. SpriteKit: Transitioning from SpriteKit to Unity revealed the power of a GUI-centric workflow. I found that Unity’s visual editor allowed for much faster iteration on UI and level design compared to code-only frameworks.
- Scaling Version Control: Implementing Git LFS was a critical learning curve. I learned how to manage large binary assets effectively to ensure the team could collaborate without repository bloat.
- The Lead Mindset: This was my first time managing other developers. I learned the importance of clear task delegation, maintaining a solid CI/CD pipeline to prevent "breaking the build," and the value of automated testing in a collaborative environment.
- App Store Success: Successfully navigating the Apple review process and launching Resque on the App Store provided invaluable experience in the final lifecycle of game development.