Short Description

Bouncers is a single player retro styled action game that has you avoiding enemies to climb the leaderboard. The bouncer will bounce around the screen in random directions and multiply over time, but more enemies for example the asteroid will appear.

The Mini Square

The Mini Square (creative name huh?) will follow you forcing you to constantly move as you avoid all the other enemies.

The Bouncer

The Bouncer (The names get more creative I promise) bounces off the edges of your screen and can switch directions at any bounce.
The game starts off easy with 1 Bouncer but multiplies as your score gets higher. 1 Bounce = 1 point * multiplier.

The Asteroid

The Asteroid (See? More creative huh?) spawns every 10-15 seconds and will track you. Juke it to avoid it!

The Dahser

The Dasher can spawn more than once at a time in any location across your screen. They will face a random direction and charge until it leaves the screen.

The Thief

If the thief spawns, it will go faster than the mini square!
If you get hit by it, it will take some of your points!
Avoid it for 30 seconds and it will de-spawn.

Slow Motion

When an enemy gets close to you, other than the mini square, it will trigger slow motion putting a red vignette smoothly faded onto your screen and slow motion will activate so you can be precise when dodging.

Collect Powerups

Powerups will help your run last longer! Collect powerups like +1 Life, Shield, Star, Purge, and Speed!

Healing

Healing is handled by a random chance of health packs or passive healing!

Health Packs:
Collect health packs to heal instantly!

Passive Healing:
Avoid damage to continue healing!

Health Zone:
The health zone can spawn randomly, stay in it and it will continue healing you!

Leaderboard

Compete on each difficulty to get on the top 5 leaderboard!

Key Settings / Fun Options

Movement

Mouse Controls (Strongly Recommended):

The player moves smoothly towards your mouse.
Most recommended for beginners

WASD/Arrow Keys:
Snappy movement using WASD or the arrow keys

Rainbow Bouncers

A toggle to have every bouncer spawn as a random color

Special Thanks

Special thanks to my best friend George N. for coming up with some of the ideas in my game. He is in the credits section for the ideas he came up with.

Backstory

Well the short reason why this exists is my computer science teacher. But here is the long story:

I was a freshman in high school (at the time I'm writing this, I’ll be a sophomore) at 14 years old. (I turned 15 6 days ago at the time I’m writing this, July 16 2023) I recently finished a project I started the year before using python. I didn’t have to do any of the labs, I was way ahead of everyone, they were learning python and I learned it in 5th-6th grade. But since I was not working on anything, I started failing. I talked to my computer science teacher and he said for me to make another project with something new, he needed to challenge me. So I decided to learn 2D game development with Pygame. Pygame was nice, I learned it in 2 days on vacation, but following a tutorial was not enough, I wanted to prove to myself I knew something. I decided to recreate pong but then I wanted my own original idea. So I made the first version of Bouncers, called “Dodge Lines” I know it’s terrible. But it is a concept I had in mind for a few years. I worked on the game way too much and also during class and adding constant updates. 47 days later, I had 46 releases of my game on GitHub. I loved it, but I was limited by pygame and wanted to learn Unity. Surprisingly it was easier. I remade Bouncers from scratch. Remade almost every feature and improved it. I upgraded the graphics an insane amount because Unity is insanely better. And then for about half the school year, I worked non stop in and out of my classes. I would be walking in the halls to
my next class working on my game with my gaming laptop in hand. Eventually I polished the game and added so many new features, I thought of putting it on here. Finally, after a long time, I am putting my dream game on Steam. I made some changes like technical stuff with the leaderboard and achievements so I guess that not all of this was made by a 14 year old, but I don’t think it matters too much anyway. Credit goes to my computer science teacher, hopefully he has steam because I am giving him a free copy. Thank you for reading this and showing interest in Bouncers, it really means a lot.