Fruit Bouncer

Try out FRUIT BOUNCER here: https://horizon.meta.com/world/10237097642248145/

Inspiration

We wanted to create a game that was fast to pick up and play and that you could only truly experience on mobile. We knew right away that we wanted a game that had multi-touch and so we explored a number of options. It is currently NBA season and so we thought it might be fun to make a game where you shoot baskets. We eventually decided to go with a cuter theme of delivering fruit to vendors, but the inspiration was a multi-touch sports game.

What it does

In FRUIT BOUNCER you use two fingers to spawn a bounce pad that you can move around the screen. This bounce pad can be used to redirect falling fruit into vendor's carts and baskets in order to score points. You get bonus points for getting a swish and when running out of time. You can also then take the money that you earned from delivering fruit and spend it on upgrades. These upgrades change the way that you play the game and can lead to huge high-scores.

How we built it

We built it prototype first. That meant that in one day we built out the base prototype for the bouncing part of the game, and then refined that until it really felt fun to use. Only when the core mechanic felt locked in did we look at adding more to the game.

We slowly added more and more little features to the game until it started to really fill out nicely. Power-ups were added when the game started to feel a little stale and we needed something that you could work towards earning as a player.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a number of challenges around getting the physics to behave in a way that is both realistic and fun. We learned that real physics often is frustrating to play with and players really would like assisted real physics. We ended up having to augment how the ball bounces off of the bouncer so that it felt better for our play-testers.

We also struggled some with the fact that persistent variables don't always work in the desktop editor, which meant that in order to test if they were working we always had to preview it on our phone and then go from there.

This is also a game where the skill gap between new and experienced can really create a discrepancy in how many points you are able to get in a given time. That made balancing the game much more difficult than we had planned on.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have released a game. Anytime you are able to take a game from nothing to release it is an amazing journey and one that we were a bit nervous we wouldn't be able to complete this time around. We are also proud of being able to find a balance between moving fast and doing things "perfectly."

What we learned

We learned that moving fast can work really well at the start of a production cycle. Being able to iterate as people play your game without worrying about having all the little systems in place can really be a good way to find the fun.

What's next for FRUIT BOUNCER

We would love to add more level variation as you are playing through the game and additional power-ups that you can use. A stretch goal would be to add different fruit that you can buy to skin the game to your liking and potentially change how the game is played.