NovaSwift
Rebuilding a 2002 space classic, natively, in Swift.
A fan rebuild of EV Nova written from scratch in Swift so it runs natively on Mac, iPad, iPhone and Apple TV. Newtonian flight and combat, a galaxy map, missions, co-op multiplayer and an in-game plug-in store. Public TestFlight beta.
EV Nova came out in 2002 and there has never been a good way to play it on modern hardware. NovaSwift is a ground-up rebuild of the engine in Swift — not an emulator, not a wrapper — so it runs natively across Mac, iPad, iPhone and Apple TV.
The hard part was archaeology. The original ship AI runs off resource tables that had to be reverse-engineered before any of it could be reimplemented, alongside Newtonian flight physics, the galaxy map, the mission system, local Wi-Fi and Game Center co-op, and a plug-in store for community content.
It ships zero copyrighted game data — you bring your own, the same way OpenMW and OpenRA work. Unofficial and unaffiliated. A Godot port for Linux and Windows is in progress.
Most of the engine, and the format archaeology behind it, was built working alongside Claude Code — I would rather be upfront about that than have someone work it out.
What it does
- Written from scratch in Swift — native on Mac, iPad, iPhone and Apple TV
- Ship AI reconstructed from reverse-engineered resource tables
- Newtonian flight and combat
- Local Wi-Fi and Game Center co-op
- In-game plug-in store for community content
Built with
- Swift
- SwiftPM
- Metal
- Game Center
- Godot
Screens
Unofficial and unaffiliated. Ships no copyrighted game data — bring your own.