SpriteKit is Apple's framework for creating 2D games for iOS 7+, macOS 10.9+, tvOS 9+ and watchOS 3+. It is a 2D rendering engine combined with a physics engine. It is compatible with both Objective-C and Swift.
SpriteKit provides a graphics rendering and animation infrastructure that you can use to animate arbitrary textured images, or sprites. SpriteKit uses a traditional rendering loop where the contents of each frame are processed before the frame is rendered.
SpriteKit is available on iOS (ios), macOS (macos), tvOS (tvos) and watchOS (watchos). It uses the graphics hardware available on the hosting device to composite 2D images at high frame rates. SpriteKit supports many different kinds of content, including:
- Untextured or textured rectangles (sprites)
- Text
- Arbitrary CGPath-based shapes
- Video
SpriteKit also provides support for cropping and other special effects; you can apply these effects to all or a portion of your content. You can animate or change these elements in each frame. You can also attach physics bodies to these elements so that they properly support forces and collisions. Physics bodies can be created as rectangles or circles, follow CGPaths, or use an image's alpha to create a more complex physics body.
Since SpriteKit supports a rich rendering infrastructure and handles all of the low-level work to submit drawing commands to OpenGL (opengl) or Metal, you can focus your efforts on solving higher-level design problems and creating great gameplay.
