Shipping my first iOS game using agentic coding
DevLog - 0
Last two months, especially after the release of antigravity, Google’s agentic IDE, have been quite exciting. There was an itch in my head where I had a concept for the game, but never got to build it. Then finally, due to antigravity, I was able to scratch that itch and got into production within 2 months!
The initial part and design of the game was my own. I offloaded a fair share of programming tasks to the agent so that I can blitz through the small proof of concept and actually learn about publishing the game in the app store. It was a real process of trial and error. For example, the main horde system went through multiple iterations before we settled into the current one. And boy, it was an adventure for sure. There are countless things that I never cared about that suddenly popped up in front of me.
One thing that I realized is to use agentic system to discuss the architecture and think through it. Since coding was relatively cheap because of agents, I was able to iterate abstraction. My initial abstraction was about class, callables and scenes. As it hit the limitation on compute, I resorted to simple compute shader version of the collision. This avoid the callables and improved performance by a lot.
Even if the game itself was built within a month, the logistics were a different story. I had to manage screenshots for every iPhone and iPad resolution, get the account verified, create a privacy policy, and build a webpage for the app. Each one of those steps took days. As I am from Nepal, getting developer account took me 14 days!! 14. One Four.
The game is very simple at the moment and I will need substantial polishing to call it done. It is only getting started and now I will have to slowly and eventually build it further. Currently there is no playtesting and development is slowed due to personal reasons. Now that context is set, let’s dive deep into how this all began.
My wife doesn't play games. One afternoon, I had this idea of having a character swing across a screen and wanted to see how that would actually work. I prompted these AI tools to build a webapp and see how it worked. And that hooked her. She actually played for a while.
Then I realized I might be onto something super casual. Geared with this idea of making it fun, I decided to dive deep into the concept and flesh out the designs. The game was simple to make. All the artwork is generated using custom shaders.
The Development Roadmap
I have set up a milestone system to show exactly where the game is headed. As the community grows, I will reinvest that energy back into the game.
100 units sold: Add the Card System to expand gameplay variety.
250 units sold: Add enemies and completely redesign the theme song.
500 units sold: Implement a Power System and improve player movement physics.
1000 units sold: Add multiple playable character types.
2500 units sold: Introduce new environment biomes and expanded shader effects.
5000 units sold: Develop a dedicated Boss Challenge mode.
Current Progress: 3 / 100 units toward the first milestone.
I will update this count as my posts increase and the community grows. Further, I will keep my app building, and other journeys coming! Stay tuned.
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