One Button Jumper

How to play

SPACE = jump and change direction

Once in the air, SPACE will make the player dive and bounce off the diamonds

R = Quick Reset

My prototype is a timing one-button game. Players must time their jumps and dives around randomly spawned diamonds in order to make it higher in the level. 

Jump over diamonds to avoid them and dive on them for a secondary bounce. I wanted the player to feel as though they had more control over the movement still and created the diamonds so the player bounces according to which side the player dives on. 

Balance

I spent most of my time creating the mechanics and a spawn system for the diamonds, but when truly random, the game is nearly unbeatable. Often there would be no real “solution” to the problem of how to get higher. Still the game proved too hard, so next, I created an array of levels for the diamonds to spawn at which allowed the player more freedom of movement, while still feeling random. This created more space between diamonds for the player to travel…  and it felt so lame. I switched back and part of the game is just having the patience to see the path as it appears. I preferred this to the easy version with clear stepping stones. 

Iteration

Originally the diamonds bounced the player opposite their last direction of travel. This felt incredibly pigeonholed. I couldn’t control my ascent well enough to avoid obstacles or ensure my next jump. I divided the diamond into two triangles which changed a variable on the player’s direction of travel to allow for control via timing of dives to hit specific sides. 

I was satisfied with the jump until I started adding in the diamonds and then it felt nearly unfair. The window of opportunity to jump and hit dives was too small. The first change I made was to give the player much more horizontal movement. This created more opportunities to hit the next dive. 

https://github.com/Graucus/One-Button-Game-2