Tile, Tap, Push!
A tile-tapping time for two players inspired by the game "Don’t Touch The White Tile"

Tile, Tap, Push! is a two-player, fast-paced game that’s all about reaction time and quick thinking. Tap an endless stream of white tiles faster than your opponent to win!

The main menu and options screen, from which players can change the colors on each side.

Overview

Tile, Tap, Push! was developed while I was studying at the Make School Summer Academy in 2015. Even though I didn’t really know iOS development at the time, I got bored during the tutorial section of the program and decided just to jump right into creating an app for the first time.

The gameplay is simple: two players sit on opposite sides of the screen and race to tap the white tiles on the screen in front of them as fast as possible. Every time a player taps a tile correctly, the dividing line in the center moves towards their opponent, which fills more of the screen with the player’s color. However, if a player makes an incorrect tap, the line moves back towards them. The first player to completely fill the screen with their color wins the game.

There’s also a single player mode where one player attempts to survive as long as possible against a line that moves down the screen with increasing speed.

Single player mode.

Implementation and Design

I programmed the majority of the app in Swift using the open-source game engine cocos2d-objc. I also added Mixpanel for analytics and Game Center integration for single player mode leaderboards.

I liked the idea of a “rolling” grid for the tiles, so I had the height of each tile row scale up as it approaches the player. This also helped to make it clearer to new players which white tile they had to press—before, players would tap any of the white tiles on their side of the screen.

The MVP design of the gameplay (blue/red) vs the final, current design (gray/orange).

Result

At the Demo Day at the end of the program, Tile, Tap, Push (along with Reaction Line, another project I worked on while at Make School) won the “Audience Choice” award as voted by the vistors in attendance. As a result, I was able to present both of my projects in front of everyone (approximately 100 people). I also received the “Student Choice Runner-Up” award as selected by my fellow students in the program.

You can view the entire presentation in the video below:

Tile, Tap, Push! is available to download on the App Store here.