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Cadenic StudiosBuilt in Canada
Product

Delta-V

An orbital odyssey: build the ship, then fly it

Delta-V is a physics game about gravity and momentum. You assemble a spacecraft from roughly 580 parts, then fly it through 100 hand-tuned and generated levels. There are no forced interstitials. The only ads are ones you choose to watch.

Status
Live on Google Play
Year
2025 – present

Where to get it

Google Play(opens in a new tab)

Delta-V in use

Delta-V's Star Chart on a tablet, showing Inner Belt, Ice Fields, Volcanic Ring and Gas Giant Sector, each locked behind a mission count
Fig. 01 — Delta-V

01Brief

The problem

Mobile physics games usually resolve into one of two failures: the simulation is too shallow to be interesting, or the monetisation is so aggressive that it interrupts the exact moment the simulation gets good. Delta-V had to hold a real orbital-mechanics feel at 60fps on a mid-range Android phone, and earn its keep without ever interrupting a flight.

02Measured

By the numbers

The figures that describe the shape of the build. Each one was read off the shipped product itself.

~580

buildable components

100

flyable levels

5

hulls, each flying differently

03Process

The build

Decision by decision: how it is put together, and what each one bought.

Dia. 01The transfer between two of these four orbits is the manoeuvre the whole game is about. A burn raises the far side of the craft's path; a second burn at the top of that path circularises it onto the higher orbit. Gravity, momentum and a fixed fuel budget, with no second attempt: that is the flight model Delta-V had to hold at 60fps on a mid-range Android phone.

  1. An audited parts economy

    Roughly 580 components across fifteen categories, five hulls, and a hundred levels. The balance between them is validated by a committed audit suite that models the economy, plots the difficulty curve and asserts purchase invariants on every run. Tuning is done against that output.

  2. Monetisation that never interrupts a flight

    Forced interstitials are disabled by policy. What ships is opt-in rewarded video and menu-screen banners, so an ad can only ever appear where the player chose to be. A dismissed rewarded ad pays nothing. That was once a subtle truthiness bug that granted rewards on dismissal, and there is a test for it now.

  3. Native work where the runtime ran out

    Subscription billing runs through a hand-written Kotlin Capacitor plugin talking to RevenueCat, because the packaged plugin did not cover the entitlement shape the game needed. Hardware back-button routing was written the same way: flight, pause, results, sub-scene and root all resolve to the same public methods the on-screen buttons call.

  4. Zero audio files

    Every sound in the game is synthesised at runtime through the Web Audio API. No file is downloaded, decoded or licensed, and the audio budget of the whole title is the code that generates it.

  5. A companion hub and a headless depot

    playdeltav.space is a separate Next.js application that tracks live spaceflight from public launch data and renders computed globes for real bodies. Its merchandise depot runs headlessly on the Shopify Storefront API, handling product and variant queries, live stock, cart, and the hand-off to Shopify's own checkout. It sells in Canadian dollars from a storefront that shares none of Shopify's front end.

04Screens

Selected screens

Every screen here was captured from the shipped build and cropped, never mocked up. Each plate is cut to its own capture, so nothing here has been squared off to fit a grid.

Delta-V in flight, with fuel and boost gauges, a radar inset and thrust controls around a craft near a planet
, open Fig. 02 at full size
Fig. 02Flight: gravity, momentum and a fuel budget, on a fixed timer.
Delta-V's Garage listing fuel tank components by rarity with their stat bonuses
, open Fig. 03 at full size
Fig. 03The Garage holds roughly 580 parts across fifteen categories, each with a rarity and a stat line.
Delta-V's Hangar showing the Scout Mk I lander with thrust, fuel, handling and land tolerance ratings
, open Fig. 04 at full size
Fig. 04Five hulls sit in the Hangar, each with its own handling model.
Delta-V's main menu with the Scout Mk I lander, Hangar, Garage, Records and Daily entries
, open Fig. 05 at full size
Fig. 05The menu. The whole game is reachable from one screen.
Delta-V's HUD layout editor, with the brake, boost and steering controls being dragged into position
, open Fig. 06 at full size
Fig. 06Controls drag anywhere on the HUD, and the layout persists.
Delta-V's settings for camera zoom, steering mode, one-handed mode and sensitivity
, open Fig. 07 at full size
Fig. 07Settings. One-handed mode snaps thrust, boost and steering into a single corner.

05Stack

What it runs on

The tools in production, grouped by the job they do.

Game
  • Phaser 3
  • Vite
  • JavaScript
  • Web Audio API
Mobile
  • Capacitor
  • Kotlin
  • Android
Services
  • Firebase Firestore
  • Firebase Auth
  • Crashlytics
  • RevenueCat
  • Google AdMob
Companion site
  • Next.js 16
  • React 19
  • Tailwind CSS v4
  • Framer Motion
Commerce
  • Shopify Storefront API
  • GraphQL
  • Resend

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