Bounce
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Professional
Solo
Sept 2019
4 weeks
Javascript & phaser
Iphone, Android, Flarie app
Contributions
Game design
System design
Scripting
Description
Bounce is a mobile game I made for the app Flarie at the advergaming company Flarie. The ball bounces up and down, avoid obstacles and gain points.
Game loop
The ball bounces up and down by itself. Touch the screen to bounce down fast. Avoid obstacles by deciding when to tap and make the ball bounce down. When an obstacle is avoided the player gains points.
Assets and their functions
Ball/player
The ball bounces up and down and with a touch input, it bounces down fast. This is how the player controls the ball. The player has three hearts/lives. When the ball hits an obstacle one heart/life is removed. Remaining two, which means one more try until game over.
Reflection
In the first revision of the game, the player could gain a life back by tapping the screen to make the ball bounce down fast when a heart appeared on the screen. This made the game too easy. Therefore, and with the fast paced nature of the game, I decided that the player starts with three lives and that is it.
Obstacles
There are three different obstacles. One small, one medium sized and one big obstacle. If the ball hits an obstacle the player loses one life. The small obstacle gives four points, the medium sized gives six points and the big obstacle eight points. When the player has jumped over ten obstacles the spawn rate increases (more obstacles on the screen). This happens five times and then the spawn rate has reached its maximum difficulty.
Reflection
Why I choose exactly five times was because I tested it a couple of times on different players and level five was the hardest most players could manage. If the spawn rate decreased over a longer period of time, the game become to slow and uninteresting.
Coin
When the ball hits a coin the player gains 10 points. Coins can only appear behind the small obstacle, in front of the medium sized obstacle or behind the medium sized obstacle. When a small or medium sized obstacle is spawned there is a 30% chance that a coin can spawn. A coin can never spawn behind or in front of the medium sized obstacle at the same time.
Reflection
Jumping over obstacles by itself was just not fun enough. Adding something the player could collect made the game a lot more fun. Sometimes something this simple can have a huge impact on the gameplay. With the coin I gave the player the choice to gain more points with the risk of hitting an obstacle. Some greedy players might lose and more experienced players will feel a sense of satisfaction when getting that coin.
Limitations
Bounce is made for the mobile app Flarie. Flarie focuses on hyper casual mobile games. This means that the games have to be very easy to get into, they can be hard but not complex. A mobile also comes with its own limitations which I think Flarie knows very well and uses in its advantage. Personally I think arcade games with one simple input like bounce are very good for the platform. Flarie has a short development cycle, it is two or four weeks on each game.
Things I wanted to add if I had have more time:
An combo system that gives the player more points while not hitting an obstacle.
An combo system for the coins that gives more points for each coin taken.
Some nice visual feedback on these two combo systems.
A box that the player has to bounce a certain amount of times on to break, when broken the player is rewarded with four coins.
This goes against the core, bounce to avoid obstacles, but I still think this would have been a fun thing.
Summary
Bounce is a fast paced game that is all about timing and some planning. Knowing when to bounce or not is a crucial skill the player will have to learn. Sometimes the greed might take over when the coin appears and the disruption causes the timing the player has built up to be shattered.
