My third game, Bouncy Bird, is a casual game where you have to guide the bird around the pipes, collecting gems. Gems can be used to buy upgrades, decreasing the bounciness of the bird and decreasing the speed, giving you more time! You can unlock different birds and themes, or buy the Cookie birds and themes!
Bouncy Bird can be played now in your browser! This version is not supported, and any minor bugs will not be fixed. Please still let me know (minibonzogames@gmail.com) and known bugs will be posted here.
Bouncy Bird was the third mobile game I ever made, immediately after Plank Spin towards the end of 2021. It was also the quickest I've ever made a game, from idea to first playable version was only 1 week. It then took far longer than a week to test everything and fix all the bugs, but I was testing all 3 of my first games at the same time then, so it's not as comparable. The game's release went fairly smoothly, the game was much more popular among my friends than its predecessor Plank Spin, but the comparisons to Flappy Bird obviously came around, and lots of people understandably struggled with the unintuitive physics. I really liked making all the different birds and themes, especially the cookie versions. Compared to the kind of graphics I make today they're really terrible, but at the time I was very proud of myself, and enjoyed the challenge of making the images on the bird selection screen work properly, Unity's UI tools leave a lot to be desired and I was constantly having squashed and stretched birds in random places. I don't like how juttery the graphics can be, mixing pure physics objects (like the bird) with objects that ignore physics and make defined, linear movements (like the platform). This clash made the game less smooth and probably is the reason for the weird quirks in the physics. This was the first game I made that I actually released a proper update for, other than just bug fixes and minor improvements. 1.1 The Gems Update released about a week after launch and added themes (originally the game only had unlockable birds), upgrades and changed the design of the gems to make them more distinctive.
The game follows the same structure as the iconic Flappy Bird, the player has to guide their bird past obstacles in a 2D side-scroller. The key difference here is that the player cannot directly control the bird, instead controlling a platform underneath, which moves down with the player is not touching the screen, and moves up when they are. The bird simply bounces up and down on this moving platform. The physics of it are a bit strange, the bird bounces higher when the platform is moving down, and bounces less when the platform is moving up, the polar opposite of the real life physics that players expect when playing the game. This was unintentional, but I couldn't be bothered to work out why it was happening to fix it so I kept it. The player can also collect gems throughout the game by guiding the bird into the green hexagons that appear between each set of obstacles. These gems can be used to unlock new bird skins and background themes, or buy upgrades to make the game easier.
The player can spend their gems to unlock 7 additional bird skins of different colours (yellow, pink, dark green, dark blue, orange, blue and red). Each colour also has a unique pattern, but does not affect the gameplay in any way. There are also 4 Cookie Birds (regular, white, dark and rainbow) that can be unlocked through an in-app purchase. There are also themes for each of these 7 additional colours and 4 cookie flavours, which change the colours of the top and bottom boundaries, as well as the colours and patterns on the obstacles. Looking back now (in September 2025), I don't know how I managed to make these graphics so boring, but it does help me realise how much my graphic design skills have improved since then. I still think it works very well as a small additional thing that gives players a long term goal, to unlock their favourite colour, or unlock all the colours.
There are 2 upgrades that the player can buy, also using gems. First is Lower Bounce, fairly self-explanatory, the bird will bounce on the platform less, allowing for more precise movement. Lower Speed is also self-explanatory, slowing the speed of the game down so that the player has more time to manouvre the bird before each set of obstacles. I think upgrades were a bit of a gimmick in this game, they don't really improve the playing experience, and they don't provide much of a goal, since gems are also used to buy the different birds and themes.
