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Meridian Coast: close-range combat against robot security. Physical iPhone gameplay.
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Black Sand: fighting the infestation in the free opening chapter. Physical iPhone gameplay.
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Meridian Coast: lining up a sniper shot against a robot. Physical iPhone gameplay.
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Arctic Terminal: a rooftop firefight at the frozen freight port. Physical iPhone gameplay.
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Arena2006 app icon — original, uncropped 1024 × 1024 artwork.
Inspiration
Arena2006 brings the feel of mid-2000s sci-fi shooters to a phone: cool places to explore, smooth movement, fun weapons, and plenty of enemies to battle. The campaign objectives are meant to be straightforward and easy to follow while bringing players through diverse environments.
What it does
Board the Determinant, choose missions at its bridge computer, and follow the trail of a missing ship across three chapters. The journey begins with an asteroid landing, continues into a top secret arctic base, and ends with a beach assault on an industrial planet.
The game combines first-person combat, exploration and vehicles with touch controls for aiming, firing, jumping, sliding, and more. Campaign progress is saved, completed chapters can be replayed, and no game account is required.
Black Sand is free. Completing it reveals the next chapter. A single $4.99 USD purchase unlocks paid access to chapters 2 and 3, with unlimited attempts and no rewarded ads required. Players still have to beat each level in order (highly skilled players may even find a hidden level). RevenueCat manages purchase access and restoration through StoreKit.
How I built it
The iPhone product uses a native Rust/Bevy game implementation with Box3D as the physics engine. A Swift bridge connects the game to RevenueCat and StoreKit, with Google Mobile Ads and Google UMP for optional rewarded ads and privacy choices. Maps, gameplay and touch controls run in the native game.
The workflow combines focused native tests, scripted runs through real game systems, inspected rendered captures and physical iPhone testing. Physical-device testing used an iPhone 16 Pro Max running iOS 26.6.1.
Challenges and what I learned
Getting a first-person campaign onto a phone meant treating performance and touch UI/UX working right. And once the app finally felt ready enough to ship, I had no idea how much extra effort it takes to submit it to the app store and get it approved! I feel better prepared to make other platform app submissions though.
I also have never put ads in any of my software before, I've been wanting to give it a shot though. Kind of a perfect opportunity to do so. Stats and analytics are interesting to me so this will be another set of numbers to monitor.
Making the game itself taught me a lot about physics engines, networking, 3d modeling, animation, enemy ai, navigation, and game feel.
Accomplishments
Arena2006 is live on the US App Store as of September 29, 2026. It brings together a three-chapter campaign, native combat and traversal, vehicle sequences, and touch controls. RevenueCat-backed purchases and restoration have been tested through TestFlight on a physical iPhone. The free chapter is a real slice of the game, and the paid offer gives players a simple way to play more.
What's next
Refine phone performance and combat readability, add online co-op, and expand the number of game modes. Updates are already queued up in TestFlight :)
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