Firmament is the Limit

App Icon
main menu
pushing the firmament
Coin packs powered by RevenueCat
Shipaton portrait screenshot

Inspiration.

Firmament is the Limit started with one question: can one-button flight feel expressive on a phone? I wanted the player to shape motion rather than steer directly: hold to thrust, release to fall, then catch the rocket at the right moment.

What it does.

Firmament is a calm one-button arcade game about keeping a tiny rocket in the air. Players collect fuel to survive, chase coins for risk/reward, avoid clouds, push distance and altitude records, complete daily challenges, and unlock ships with different play styles.

Target awards.

Firmament is targeting the Best Game Award and the RevenueCat Design Award.

For the Best Game Award, Firmament combines expressive one-button flight, short replayable runs, daily challenges, and distinct unlockable rockets. Its optional RevenueCat-powered coin packs support progression without interrupting gameplay, adding subscriptions, or locking ships behind payment.

For the RevenueCat Design Award, judges should notice the curved press-and-release movement, the elastic Firmament boundary, the soft handmade sky world, distinctive rocket silhouettes, readable phone-first visual hierarchy, and restrained animated interface.

How I built it.

I built it for iOS with Swift, SpriteKit, and SwiftUI. The core game logic lives in a pure Swift GameCore module, separate from rendering and UI, which made physics, scoring, progression, ships, and daily challenges easier to test and tune.

Challenges I ran into.

The hardest part was making one button feel simple but skillful. The rocket needed freedom, but also readable constraints, so the game uses fuel, clouds, fog, a no-thrust ceiling, and an elastic altitude marker called the Firmament to guide the player without making the sky feel boxed in.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of.

I'm proud that the core flight loop feels readable and expressive with only one input. I'm also proud of keeping the surrounding systems simple: fuel is survival, coins are risk/reward, clouds create pressure, and ships change play style without burying the player in upgrade complexity.