When I see SpriteKit questions on Stack Overflow, I notice a common problem people make. They make every visible entity in their game, such as the player and enemies, a subclass of SKSpriteNode. They also add a property to the subclass for the sprite node.

class Player: SKSpriteNode {
	var sprite: SKSpriteNode
}

Subclassing SKSpriteNode and having a property of SKSpriteNode is redundant. If you have a property for the sprite, you don’t need to subclass SKSpriteNode. If you have a SKSpriteNode subclass, an instance of the subclass has all the components of SKSpriteNode. You don’t need the property.

In 99 percent of cases, avoid subclassing SKSpriteNode and add a property for the sprite node to your class or struct. Prefer composition to inheritance.

class Player {
	var sprite: SKSpriteNode
}

A player has a sprite node along with other properties that depend on your game (score, number of lives, health, etc.). A player is not a sprite node.