I’m calling this Super Spectrum Sphere. This will be the first app of my own that I actually upload to the app store. It will be submitted for approval before September 30th, 2014.
This game is basically a Breakout variant. The main action is to break bricks with a ball. However, unlike in breakout, you don’t have a paddle to keep the ball bouncing. Instead you have a cannon which oscillates. The player will tap to shoot the ball from the cannon and change the color of the cannon. When the ball emerges it will be the same color that the cannon was when the screen was tapped. If the ball bounces off a wall or the floor its color will change to the next color in the ROYGBIV spectrum. If the ball contacts a brick that is the same color the brick will break and the ball will continue. If the ball contacts a brick that is a different color the ball will break and disappear and the brick will remain.
Multiple balls may be on the screen at the same time, but the fewer balls you use to eliminate all the bricks the higher your score will be.
I like to use a graph paper notebook to sketch out my designs. The screen area outlined in the image above is the approximate size of the screen area of an iPhone 5 or 5S. Older iPhones with smaller screens are about three grid units shorter than that. You may have noticed that I made four small marks on the sides of the screen area. Those mark 1.5 units from the top and bottom, accounting for the screen size difference between older and newer iPhones. I have designed the play area to fit within the space available on older iPhones with room for an ad at the top. The extra space afforded by the larger screen of the 5 and 5S will be taken up by the background graphic of the play frame.
Super Spectrum Sphere will be a free app monetized with ads. I have not yet decided which ad api I will use. I may launch it with Apple’s iAd and re-evaluate after monitoring the performance for a month. I’ve read that the iAd network doesn’t work in some countries.