Clay Rush

The story

Clay Rush is an arcade skeet shooter for iPhone and iPad. Tap left or right to track and blast clay pigeons out of the sky, chase a high score across short, replayable rounds, and come back daily for a fresh challenge. Built solo in Swift and SpriteKit, on top of DSGameKit, Designspin's reusable in-house Swift package for iOS games.

The brief was a fast, satisfying core loop that fits a coffee break: twitch-friendly input, immediate feedback, no menus between you and the next shot. Free to play with ads and a one-time IAP to remove them.

Game design and feel

The whole game lives around two actions: aim and shoot. Targets spawn on randomised arcs across the horizon, the reticle snaps left or right on tap, and shots resolve instantly with a particle burst, audio cue, and HUD feedback. Round progression tightens the difficulty curve through configurable round definitions, so each session escalates without ever breaking pace.

A daily challenge picks a fresh objective each day with local notification reminders so players have a reason to come back, and an achievement system recognises longer-term progression.

Architecture

The game is composed of small, focused systems rather than fat scene classes:

• RoundSystem drives wave pacing and round configuration
• TargetSystem spawns and tracks clay targets along their flight paths
• ShotSystem resolves shots, hit detection, and combo state
• ReticleSystem handles aim input and sight feedback
• ParticleSystem wraps SpriteKit particle emitters for the clay shatter
• AudioSystem centralises one-shot SFX and music
• AchievementSystem persists long-term progression
• DailyChallengeTracker generates the day's objective and tracks progress against it, with DailyNotificationManager scheduling local reminders

Each system is independently testable and scenes (Title, Game) wire them together via dependency injection. Shared infrastructure (texture caching, ad management, IAP) lives at the app level, so gameplay code stays focused on gameplay.

DSGameKit

Clay Rush sits on top of DSGameKit, Designspin's reusable Swift package for iOS games. It provides a SpriteKit scene base class, a small systems/runner pattern, audio and haptic managers, a Game Center wrapper, ad and IAP plumbing, easing helpers, an object pool, and a seeded-random generator. The same framework also backs Block Bomb Chevron's RealityKit build, so improvements to the shared infrastructure flow through every game Designspin ships.

Highlights

• Released and live on the App Store
• iPhone and iPad universal build
• Built solo in Swift and SpriteKit
• Daily challenges with local notifications
• Achievement system and persistent progression
• Free with ads, one-time IAP to remove them
• Powered by Designspin's own DSGameKit framework

Status

Live on the App Store, currently at version 1.1.