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Show HN: Bubbles, a vanilla JavaScript web game

(ehmorris.com)
201 points ehmorris | 3 comments | 13 Mar 25 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

Hey everybody, you might remember my older game, Lander! It made a big splash on Hacker News about 2 years ago. I'm still enjoying writing games with no dependencies. I've been working on Bubbles for about 6 months and would love to see your scores.

If you like it, you can build your own levels with my builder tool: https://ehmorris.com/bubbles/builder/ and share the levels here or via Github.

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megadata ◴[13 Mar 25 19:31 UTC] No.43356516[source]▶
Slick as silk! But too fast too quickly. Gimme some easy endorphin in the first few levels before I start struggling.
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t0k0l0sh ◴[13 Mar 25 19:52 UTC] No.43356665[source]▶
Agreed, perhaps it's easier on a mobile device but I found the first two levels after the tutorial way to fast using a touchpad and left a little frustrated :-(

Easing into the difficulty slower sounds like a good plan!

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1. al_borland ◴[13 Mar 25 20:52 UTC] No.43357122[source]▶
I was on mobile and it felt like by the time I saw what was happening I was already losing. Very little reaction time available. I thought maybe it would be easier on a desktop, but I guess not.. maybe with a mouse instead of a trackpad.

Or maybe the author is going for the flappy bird effect. Make it punishingly hard, so players celebrate hitting level 4. But I didn’t have the same intant addiction as I did with Flappy Bird. Probably due to more complex gameplay and each level having 3 ways to play it.

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2. ehmorris ◴[13 Mar 25 22:12 UTC] No.43357735[source]▶
Yes if you don’t already know where the bubbles are gonna fall it’s very hard to get to them in time with a trackpad. Although I play with a trackpad myself and can beat most levels.

I had a friend suggest a “course preview” during the countdown screen so that users can anticipate the bubbles without memorizing them.

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3. al_borland ◴[14 Mar 25 00:24 UTC] No.43358533[source]▶
I replayed it some more and I improved with each go. It’s kind of like older games, where the levels have to be learned over time to get good. I think we’ve forgotten about that with the more gentle on-ramp most games give these days.