Games & Simulations
Active development

Pixel Battleline

An offline portrait strategy-action game where the player steers a compact army across three lanes and carries each commitment into later threats.

Currently free on the App Store

Category: Games & Simulations
Platform: iPhone · iOS 15+
Status: Active development

How much strategy can fit inside one tense, readable run?

Visible lane tradeoffs, automatic combat, army preservation, deterministic battle plans, and same-battle retry make each loss understandable and each correction comparable.

User value

Read three options. Commit to one. Learn from the same battle.

Move a compact army between three lanes, accept visible rewards or risks, and retry a stable battle to test a better route.

See the tactical proposition

Read gates, rewards, enemies, and objective pressure inside a compact portrait battlefield.

Carry every consequence

Preserve soldiers, ammunition, formation, weapons, and temporary powers for the threats that follow.

Correct the decision

Retry the same versioned plan and stable random sequence so a changed outcome reflects changed commands.

Pixel Battleline App Store composition showing a white pixel army at the bottom and three colored choice gates under the heading Choose Your Line. — **Three-lane commitment**Application-rendered Debug capture composed as App Store media, with embedded promotional copy.

Features

A small input set with persistent tactical effects.

The current playable path combines lane movement, automatic combat, resource state, objective pressure, pause, and immediate results.

01
Three-lane movement
Swipe left or right by one lane and commit the army to the gate, reward, or threat ahead.
02
Automatic combat
Let the game handle firing, projectiles, contact, and most timing while you focus on position and preparation.
03
Visible army state
Track soldiers, ammunition, formation, active weapon or power, damage, and objective progress as the run develops.
04
Survival and annihilation
Stay alive for a target duration or remove the required share of enemy strength before the battle resolves.
05
Three world identities
Choose among three worlds, four runs per world, and visible survival or annihilation modes in the current menu.
06
Authored campaign model
Fifteen versioned battle definitions, progression, objectives, results, retry, and migration exist in domain logic; final production UI connection remains unconfirmed.

How it works

Choose, commit, preserve, retry.

Direct input stays narrow so attention remains on the consequences of lane position.

01
Select the battle
Choose a world, run, and survival or annihilation mode from the visible menu.
02
Read the three lanes
Compare the rewards, costs, enemies, and future pressure shown across the field.
03
Commit the army
Swipe one lane at a time while automatic combat continues around the formation.
04
Protect accumulated strength
Preserve soldiers and useful battle state for the gates, threats, and assaults still ahead.
05
Resolve the objective
Survive the required duration or eliminate enough enemy strength to reach the result.
06
Retry the same identity
Restart the fixed plan to test a corrected route without silently changing the battle underneath it.

Product demos

Seventeen seconds on the battleline.

Pixel Battleline gameplay preview

0:17

Current campaign media

Choices become pressure across the run.

These application-rendered Debug captures are composed App Store assets with embedded headlines, not neutral in-game screenshots.

Pixel Battleline App Store composition showing a small white army, colored enemies, three lane gates, a final assault label, and a visible soldier counter. — Accumulated soldiers under final-assault pressure.

Every soldier counts

Earlier gains remain visible when the army reaches a later assault.

Pixel Battleline App Store composition showing a white soldier formation with blue and orange threats positioned in separate lanes. — Formation state inside the three-lane field.

Prepare the formation

Army shape and lane position become preparation for visible threats.

Pixel Battleline App Store composition showing a large white army and a small cyan enemy approaching across a sparse annihilation field. — An annihilation objective with visible pressure.

Face visible threats

A sparse field keeps the army, enemy, and objective relationship readable.

Pixel Battleline App Store composition showing a white army below three large colored enemies, lane gates, and warning markers during a final assault. — A composed final-assault campaign capture.

Survive the final assault

Later encounters convert previous preparation into a direct multi-lane test.

Pixel Battleline App Store composition showing a survival battle with a white army, orange machines, a mounted blue enemy, gates, and a survival timer. — One of the three campaign world treatments.

Three worlds

Campaign media presents different silhouettes and pressure across the world identities.

Product concept

Strategy begins when consequences stay legible.

A difficult battle can still teach the player when its choices, losses, and retry identity remain understandable.

Commitment matters more than control count

Movement is direct while attacks are automatic, keeping the decision on which tactical proposition to accept.

Stable randomness supports learning

Versioned plans and random streams let a retry serve as a meaningful counterfactual rather than a new roll of the dice.

Automation does not certify fun

Bots, simulations, and structural metrics provide engineering evidence while human readability and enjoyment remain separate review questions.

Architecture

Fixed-tick rules beneath SpriteKit action.

Typed commands and deterministic Swift state define the battle while SpriteKit presents soldiers, gates, enemies, projectiles, feedback, and results.

01Touch or scripted controller
02Typed command validation
03Canonical command recording
04Fixed 60-tick simulation
05Combat and objective events
06SpriteKit feedback and results

A battle keeps its identity

Versioned plans, stable random streams, checksums, recordings, and compatibility rules bind replay and retry to exact content.

Simulation can run without scenes

Headless battles, bots, paired experiments, balance analytics, and golden scenarios exercise canonical rules outside SpriteKit timing.

Experimental generation stays isolated

The adversarial Director compiles immutable deterministic plans in Debug and is rejected as a normal Release activation path.

The product remains offline

The inspected runtime has no networking, account, remote database, analytics, advertising, telemetry, or AI service.

Technology

A local deterministic action-game stack.

Application

Swift 5.9
SpriteKit
UIKit
AVFoundation
iPhone portrait
iOS 15+

Simulation

60 fixed ticks per second
Versioned battle plans
Stable randomness
Typed commands
Canonical checksums

Evaluation

XCTest
Headless simulation
Bot profiles
Golden scenarios
Balance analytics

Persistence

UserDefaults for selected legacy mode
Codable campaign schema
Checksums and migration
In-memory campaign store found

Runtime boundary

No dependency manager
No third-party SDK
No account
No network
No tracking or ads

Development

A release-candidate baseline exists. Production integration needs confirmation.

The repository contains v0.9.3 build 3 release-candidate packaging, campaign media, extensive deterministic systems, and an owner handoff. Public distribution is unknown, the authored campaign's production UI and durable save path are unclear, and the Debug-only Director still awaits human review.

Stage: Active development
Release baseline: v0.9.3 build 3
Authored catalogue: 15 battles
Current full test run: Not completed

Implemented

Portrait SpriteKit gameplay with swipe movement, automatic combat, soldiers, ammunition, formations, weapons, powers, gates, projectiles, enemies, pause, and results
Three visible world identities, four run identities per world, and survival or annihilation mode selection
Fifteen versioned authored battle definitions with objectives, routes, onboarding, progression, results, retry, migration, and recovery models
Stable randomness, compiled battle plans, fixed ticks, typed commands, recordings, checksums, replays, and same-battle retry
Headless simulation, bot profiles, paired experiments, balance analytics, golden scenarios, and player-experience proxies
Release packaging, accessibility and privacy evidence, asset provenance, screenshot and video capture, plus a Debug-only adversarial Director Play Lab

Production reconciliation

Confirm the public name and distribution status, connect or document the authored campaign's production menu and gameplay path, implement or verify durable on-device campaign persistence, add an end-to-end save and resume test, complete Director human review, and perform physical-device accessibility validation before any owner-controlled release action.

Pixel Battleline lab notes

The project, over time.

Notes about the thinking, architecture, development, and decisions behind this work.

Read three options. Commit to one. Learn from the same battle.

See the tactical proposition

Carry every consequence

Correct the decision

A small input set with persistent tactical effects.

Three-lane movement

Automatic combat

Visible army state

Survival and annihilation

Three world identities

Authored campaign model