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I have never developed for the iOS platform. What's the easiest way to make a Tower Defense game?

After playing a few lately, including the totally addictive Kingdom Rush, I want to try my hand at making a simple one. Is there an engine out there that most people use?

I've seen a few mentioned here and there, but I have no clue what works well and what doesn't

What about Unity iOS? I do suggest using a game engine because starting from nothing more than Obj-C and OpenGL would really pile up the work just to make a decent engine to get started with. Did you happen to download the iOS Unity pack when it was free a couple of months ago?

Yes, I got that - just haven't tried it out yet. Didn't know if there were any other options out there before I dived into it.

I am sure there are other options I am just not familiar with, but Unity iOS seems to be a popular one these days. I am seeing the logo on more and more games these days.

Do you have a Mac? Without a Mac, the options are going to be much more limited.

No Mac... but I saw a couple development suites that let you develop right on the iPad. Thought I might check one of them out. Of course I'm at work now and can't find them to link to them...

I'll probably end up using Unity. I just want something simple I can play around with.

Haven't started a soon-to-be-scrapped game project in a while, getting the itch again

I could be wrong, but I think you need a Mac with XCode to compile with Unity. There are only a couple of options if you want to go 3D. If you want 2D, you could of course make it in HTML5 using something like Impact and turn it into a native app with something like AppMobi (which allows you to make native apps without a Mac provided you have their subscription cloud service).

I would not recommend trying to develop for your Ipad. Develop it for browser then play it on the mac. You can develop it for HTML5 and play it on anything and have anyone test it. Silver edit will allow you to run a localhost on your tab and you can play all your games you make offline.

You could also develop with ImpactJS, and then use AppMobi to compile it to a native iOS app. What a lot of people are doing these days is first making a smaller, stripped-down version of their game in HTML5 to put up on browsers and convert to iOS app (to act as a lite version or trial), and then making a more advanced, full version that sells solely on the App Store. The web version can then pull in more users to your full app, much more-so than a Lite version alone could do. It also makes it much easier for people online to talk about and reference others to your game.

HTML5.. Will also work on Android and Windows.

HTML5 sounds good to me