OVH
OVH is a minimalist real-time strategy game for mobile, solo developed under my studio, Prismatic Squid.
I love mobile as a medium, and I think it's tragically underexplored! There's a big blue ocean of games that can be made with the flexibility of positional analog input (ie, two thumbs), but a lot of the most popular games on mobile amongst core gamers are just PC ports of varying quality. I made OVH to do my small part to fix that.
To achieve the emergent complexity of a typical RTS while maintaining 60 fps, I had to heavily optimize the game. There were hundreds of units and structures in a typical level. I utilized spatial hashing for neighbor queries, potential-field navigation instead of per-unit pathfinding, aggressive object pooling, and as much inter and intra frame caching as I could add without introducing bugs.
I architected a compositional system for building units and structures. Each is treated as a collection of chassis, weapons, targeting systems, and even sub-structures. This allowed me to build dozens of complicated units while maintaining predictable behavior. If a player knows what to expect when they see a particular familiar sprite, then they can more easily incorporate it into their mental model of the game. Not to mention it saved me a lot of work. It was a great system that served both me and my players.
It was a difficult process learning how to navigate the publishing process across two different platforms and work with the musician and artist I hired to help me with the game, but I learned a lot. And perhaps most important of all, I had fun!
