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Dispatch

Press Kit

Everything below is free to quote and reproduce

Raid & Rescue is out now on the App Store, with the Android release in review. The assets on this page are cleared for coverage — grab the whole kit as a zip or pick files below. Review builds, promo codes and a gameplay capture are a mail away: press@raidandrescue.com.

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Fact sheet

Title
Raid & Rescue
Developer
Diretek
Platforms
iPhone and iPad (iOS 16+); Android phones and tablets (Android 8.0+)
Genre
Real-time strategy / action, side-view
Players
Single player versus an AI commander
Engine
Swift and SpriteKit on iOS; Kotlin and a hand-written renderer on Android. Both from scratch, sharing one bit-identical simulation
Price
Free with in-app purchases
Release
iOS: out now on the App Store (September 2026). Android: submitted, in Google Play review
Store
https://apps.apple.com/app/id6806727633
Website
raidandrescue.com
Contact
press@raidandrescue.com

One line

A side-view helicopter war game where the whole match comes down to whether one van of explosives reaches the other side of the field.

Short description

Raid & Rescue is a real-time strategy game for iPhone, iPad and Android that crosses the pilot's seat of Defender with the war economy of Rescue Raiders. Two bases, one long field, and two commanders spending a steady income on ground forces that march and never stop. You fly the only aircraft on the map — and like the arcade classics it descends from, flying it well is the whole difference. You cannot order a single unit around; you can only decide what gets funded, and then change the situation yourself, one strafing run at a time.

Long description

Raid & Rescue is a native real-time strategy game for iPhone, iPad and Android, built on an all-new engine with art and sound of its own. The iOS app is Swift and SpriteKit; the Android app is Kotlin over a renderer written for it. Neither is a cross-platform runtime, and the shared part is the one that matters: the simulation was ported rule for rule and runs bit-identically on both, so a battle plays out the same way on either phone down to the last shot.

Your base sits at one end of a side-view battlefield and the enemy's at the other. Both sides earn money over time and spend it into a build queue: tanks, riflemen, specialists, single-shot rocket launchers, and the explosives van that actually decides the match. Reaching the enemy base with your van wins. Theirs reaching yours loses. Nothing else is a win condition.

You fly the only helicopter. It has thirty hit points, a gun, two missiles and two bombs, and a landing pad where refuelling and rearming take time you rarely have. Reversing is a maneuver rather than a button — with real airspeed the nose rears up through the turn and your gun sweeps past vertical, which is the only way to shoot at something above you. Three lives come free; the fourth costs five hundred dollars you would rather have spent on armour.

The field is fogged. Enemy forces render only where something of yours can see them, and the recon balloon that grants the long view is fragile and obvious. Balloon houses hold a garrison that mans a gun and flies a barrage balloon whose cable destroys a helicopter on contact at any altitude. Anti-aircraft batteries fire eight-round flak bursts with a one-and-a-half second reload, and that reload is the only window a pilot gets.

Between battles there is a research lab: hire named specialists, queue timed work, and spend the coins, blueprints and bonds the field paid out. The campaign itself is served from a backend — layouts, rosters, difficulty ladders, rewards and parallax theme packs all change without a store release on either platform — while the game remains fully playable with no network at all.

Feature list

  • A side-view battlefield with your base at one end and the enemy's at the other. Both commanders earn money continuously and buy ground units that march until something stops them.
  • You fly the only helicopter. Gun, two point-lock missiles, two bombs, and a landing pad where you refuel, rearm and repair while the war carries on without you.
  • Victory is an explosives van reaching the enemy base. Defeat is theirs reaching yours. Everything else on the field exists to change the odds on that one delivery.
  • Fog of war: enemy forces render only inside your side's sight lines, and the recon balloon that gives you the long view is the first thing worth shooting down.
  • Balloon houses hold a garrison of up to five who man a defensive gun and fly a barrage balloon whose cable kills a helicopter on contact at any altitude.
  • A research lab between battles — hire specialists, run timed research, and spend the coins, blueprints and bonds won on the field.
  • Server-driven campaign: mission layouts, unit rosters, difficulty ladders, rewards and parallax theme packs all update without a store release on either platform. The whole game still plays offline.

Screenshots

iPhone captures at 2622 × 1206. Click any frame for the full-resolution file; all five are in the zip.

Logo and icon

Please scale the icon and logo without recolouring or cropping them. The pixel art elsewhere on this site is the game's own; ask before republishing it.

Credits and lineage

Raid & Rescue is an original homage to two arcade-era ancestors: Rescue Raiders by Arthur Britto II and Greg Hale, published by Sir-Tech in 1984 and widely credited as the first real-time strategy game, which supplied the war of funded columns and a lone helicopter; and Defender, Williams Electronics' 1981 side-scrolling classic, which taught every game since that a fast ship over a long scrolling battlefield — with lives on the ground depending on the pilot — is a genre of its own. No original code, art or audio from either is used or emulated; the engine, sprites and sounds are all new. Raid & Rescue is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the rights holders of either game.