I don't know where to begin with this so I will begin randomly.

I have a game that I have been working on for a while - my goal was to make a casual turn based strategy game for iPad in the ~$5 range.

What it has turned into - I can crank out variations on a theme a lot easier now. I have one game I made as a test that is on itch (not really pushing it at all). I am close to having another one that I like a lot better.

Its kindof like super scenarios for a base game - but the scenarios can have vastly different rules. They share the same map generator and map movement rules.

Graphics were low budget and I was roughly going for a Civ 2 type quality because that was what I could afford. But, I see that as a growth opportunity as my plan is to get something out on iOS as soon as possible, improve it, and then come up with "version 2.0" and slap a higher price tag on it and put it on PC/Mac.

This is "People's Conquest" Imgur: The magic of the Internet

The UI graphics are being changed as of now. The artist I hired was living in Russia and had to leave with the invasion.

What my dream would be:

I met this guy a long time ago who wrote an OS for a US military helicopter that got cancelled. Anyways, in his despair, we talked a lot about programming and he told me it was pretty easy to make C programs multiplatform.

I know that in theory, I could poke around Godot's code and copy (and properly cite) their multi platform approach.

But this would take me a long time, and I'd have to stop making the existing game better (I am at the stage where I am improving the AI - it can win the game but its pretty easy to beat so I am trying to make it better).

There is more to this project than meets the eye. It is 225k lines of Objective C/C code. The front end is Objective C, and the actual game part is in C. The GUI operates on one thread, the actual game itself is GUI blind. The GUI just sends messages to the game thread and it goes "ok, I will/won't do that."

I designed it that way with porting in mind, and also it helps in automated testing. To test things like AI, I can have the GUI call up 7 threads of the game and run it simultaneously to check for issues. In the future, I intend to use that ability for AI development, as my ultimate goal is to make it so any given randomly generated map can be solved by the AI before playing and I can make a truly optimal AI (just for fun, no other reason as I think that would be too difficult).

Anyways, my ideal person would have MORE years experience programming than me and professional experience.

I am an amateur and my day job (I am 38) is in something completely unrelated to software development. However, my day job has helped me be a better at strategy game development, particularly in odds generation and AI development.

So far, on the internet mostly I have found overly optimistic amateurs.

Now - pay?

I can pay market rate or some sort of other agreement if you wanted % of sales. This would be perfect for someone who already has done this before who wants to advise a capable amateur on how to do it. However, if you actually wanted to be a bigger part of it, I can arrange that (that would require more effort and more $ on my part, but I'd also have to be damn sure you could do it).

While this is more of a "bucket list" thing for me, if I keep improving the project at the rate I have been, it should go places. I don't know how far. If I showed you what it looked like 2 and 4 years ago, you'd see the trajectory is up. The latest scenario plays a lot better and I have gotten significantly better at game design and AI building. In short, I created a scripting language for the game that builds the scenarios and the AI as well. The AI is done at per unit level and makes use of behavior (behavior if your from UK) trees.

email me here: