Build iOS Games with Sprite Kit

Chapter 4Menus and Cutscenes

Most games don’t just dive into the action. Often, they start at a menu of some kind that lets you fiddle with settings, or connect and review details on social game services, such as Game Center. Our game needs to let the player choose a difficulty level, so we’ll need a menu, too. Also, many games have cutscenes that aren’t part of the actual gameplay but show the backstory or build up tension with new details between levels. We need a chance to tell the story of our game, too, so we’ll add an opening scene that scrolls the narrative past the player’s eyes and out into space.

Sprite Kit has a lot of what we need but is still a relatively new technology. Building a menu with buttons and navigation can be quite ...