Press Kit

Screenshots and video are not public yet — write to press@raidandrescue.com and we will send a build and an asset pack.

Fact sheet

Title

Raid & Rescue

Developer

Diretek

Platforms

iPhone and iPad, iOS 16 and later

Genre

Real-time strategy / action, side-view

Players

Single player versus an AI commander

Engine

Swift and SpriteKit, written from scratch

Price

Not yet announced

Release

In development

Contact

press@raidandrescue.com

One line

A side-view helicopter war game where the whole match comes down to whether one van of explosives reaches the other side of the field.

Short description

Raid & Rescue is a real-time strategy game for iPhone and iPad that crosses the pilot's seat of Defender with the war economy of Rescue Raiders. Two bases, one long field, and two commanders spending a steady income on ground forces that march and never stop. You fly the only aircraft on the map — and like the arcade classics it descends from, flying it well is the whole difference. You cannot order a single unit around; you can only decide what gets funded, and then change the situation yourself, one strafing run at a time.

Long description

Raid & Rescue is a native Swift and SpriteKit real-time strategy game for iPhone and iPad, built on an all-new engine with art and sound of its own.

Your base sits at one end of a side-view battlefield and the enemy's at the other. Both sides earn money over time and spend it into a build queue: tanks, riflemen, specialists, single-shot rocket launchers, and the explosives van that actually decides the match. Reaching the enemy base with your van wins. Theirs reaching yours loses. Nothing else is a win condition.

You fly the only helicopter. It has thirty hit points, a gun, two missiles and two bombs, and a landing pad where refuelling and rearming take time you rarely have. Reversing is a maneuver rather than a button — with real airspeed the nose rears up through the turn and your gun sweeps past vertical, which is the only way to shoot at something above you. Three lives come free; the fourth costs five hundred dollars you would rather have spent on armour.

The field is fogged. Enemy forces render only where something of yours can see them, and the recon balloon that grants the long view is fragile and obvious. Balloon houses hold a garrison that mans a gun and flies a barrage balloon whose cable destroys a helicopter on contact at any altitude. Anti-aircraft batteries fire eight-round flak bursts with a one-and-a-half second reload, and that reload is the only window a pilot gets.

Between battles there is a research lab: hire named specialists, queue timed work, and spend the coins, blueprints and bonds the field paid out. The campaign itself is served from a backend — layouts, rosters, difficulty ladders, rewards and parallax theme packs all change without an App Store release — while the game remains fully playable with no network at all.

Feature list

• A side-view battlefield with your base at one end and the enemy's at the other. Both commanders earn money continuously and buy ground units that march until something stops them.
• You fly the only helicopter. Gun, two point-lock missiles, two bombs, and a landing pad where you refuel, rearm and repair while the war carries on without you.
• Victory is an explosives van reaching the enemy base. Defeat is theirs reaching yours. Everything else on the field exists to change the odds on that one delivery.
• Fog of war: enemy forces render only inside your side's sight lines, and the recon balloon that gives you the long view is the first thing worth shooting down.
• Balloon houses hold a garrison of up to five who man a defensive gun and fly a barrage balloon whose cable kills a helicopter on contact at any altitude.
• A research lab between battles — hire specialists, run timed research, and spend the coins, blueprints and bonds won on the field.
• Server-driven campaign: mission layouts, unit rosters, difficulty ladders, rewards and parallax theme packs all update without an App Store release. The whole game still plays offline.
• A deterministic 60 Hz simulation with a seeded RNG, which is why every battle can be recorded and replayed exactly.

Credits and lineage

Raid & Rescue is an original homage to two arcade-era ancestors: Rescue Raiders by Arthur Britto II and Greg Hale, published by Sir-Tech in 1984 and widely credited as the first real-time strategy game, which supplied the war of funded columns and a lone helicopter; and Defender, Williams Electronics' 1981 side-scrolling classic, which taught every game since that a fast ship over a long scrolling battlefield — with lives on the ground depending on the pilot — is a genre of its own. No original code, art or audio from either is used or emulated; the engine, sprites and sounds are all new. Raid & Rescue is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the rights holders of either game.

Assets

Logo, screenshots and gameplay capture are available on request. The pixel art on this site is the game's own; please ask before republishing it.