Vaporwave Skateboarding

Overview

Vaporwave Skateboarding is a vaporwave-inspired endless runner for Android and iOS, commissioned by Star Computer Labs. I worked on this contract for roughly 2000 hours alongside network engineers, sound designers, QA, and marketing specialists. The game shipped and is still live on both the App Store and Google Play today.

My ownership covered the full Blueprint and C++ communication architecture across every gameplay system, season pass progression, store economy, character customization, cloud save, audio visualization, and the core endless runner loop itself. Beyond programming, I created the modular tile system and all props populating the track.

Season Pass & Store Economy

The challenge was building systems that could grow after launch without requiring structural rewrites. The season pass was designed from day one to accommodate future additions without touching the underlying architecture. The store supported real-money IAP, with purchase logic, state management, and UI feedback all living in Blueprint for faster iterations by a designer. The two systems were tightly connected, buying something in the store reflected immediately in progression state and character availability.

Character Customization

New character configurations needed to be addable by the team without requiring code changes each time. The customization system was built data-driven from the start, so adding a new character or swappable part was a content task rather than a programming one.

Audio Visualization

The brief called for visuals that reacted to the music. The question was whether they should react to gameplay events or to the audio itself. Tying them to gameplay events would have been simpler but would have broken the connection to the music. The system uses frequency modulation to filter the active background track into distinct frequency bands, then drives object scale transforms from those values in real time. Different elements respond to different frequency ranges rather than just reacting to overall volume, which is what gives the aesthetic its musical connection.

Cloud Save

Cloud save turned out to be more nuanced than expected. Google Play Games Services and Apple Game Center use completely different account architectures and UUID systems, which meant a single unified cross-platform save was not feasible. Save data persists per platform, switching devices works as long as the operating system and account stay the same. Getting both integrations stable took a few weeks, mostly because the authentication flows and edge cases around account state at launch differed more than anticipated.

Procedural Level Generation

An endless runner needs variety to stay engaging across sessions, but manually designing infinite level layouts is not realistic. The tile generation system was built to handle this procedurally, integrated with scoring and difficulty progression to keep the challenge scaling alongside the content variety.

Technical Approach

All gameplay logic and system communication was implemented in Blueprint, with C++ used where performance or platform access required it. Third-party Unreal Engine marketplace plugins handled the platform integrations. I studied them thoroughly and built all gameplay logic on top rather than writing plugins from scratch. Where a plugin needed adjusting to fit our specific requirements I went into the architecture directly and made the necessary modifications.

What I Learned

Working on a live-service title at this scale for the first time taught me a lot about building systems that last rather than just systems that work right now. The season pass scalability requirement forced early architectural decisions that paid off in the end. The cloud save work gave me a real appreciation for how differently platform ecosystems handle identity and persistence. I completed my contract around six months after launch.