Build your dream city. An innovative city-builder game by Sparkling Society. As the mayor of a small town on a single island, you'll embark on a journey to explore the world.
A little about the project
City Island 5 is (primarily) a mobile game that focuses on building cities and exploring new islands to build on.
The game is free and can be downloaded on the major app stores, including the Microsoft Store on PC.
This is easily one of Sparkling Society's flagship games with its 14+ million downloads on Android alone!
For City Island 5, I worked as one of the gameplay feature developers in the team. Next to gameplay I also did UI work (the technical part where you build UI, not the art-creation part).
Project maintenance was also something I've done from time to time (think updating the Unity version we're using, updating plugins that are used for video ads for example).
Backend System
In 2023 we had the situation of GameSparks (a service we used for online functionality) shutting down.
I stepped up to the task to create new system for this from scratch, both from a development and infrastructure (DevOps) perspective. This also involved a custom tailored migration setup that would trickle player authentications from GameSparks to the new system so that players would keep their accounts.
To summarize, it's a backend system that handles user authentication, accounts, save data, multiplayer data (friend interactions for example) and the like.
This system is still in use and being developed further to this day, and is implemented in most modern Sparkling Society games (like the new flagship title City Island 6).
I consider this a personal achievement. Being able to build a system, doing both development and infrastructure, and having it be used in multiple games that serve millions of players around the world.
