This is the first time I publish a tutorial about the making of an upcoming game, but I stumbled upon Stuffed Wombat‘s upcoming game, “qomp“, and it’s already on my wish list.

You’ll love the concept: what if the ball of Pong game, trapped between paddles since 1972, manages to escape?

A simple concept for a one-button game where you control the bouncing ball and you can only invert its vertical speed by tapping the screen.

Look at the prototype I built:

Just tap or click the game to make the hero change direction, try to bounce here and there and explore the whole level.

The source code is really simple, so here it is, completely commented:

let game;
let gameOptions = {

    // hero horizontal speed, in pixels per second
    heroSpeed: 150
}

window.onload = function() {
    let gameConfig = {
        type: Phaser.AUTO,
        backgroundColor: 0x444444,
        scale: {
            mode: Phaser.Scale.FIT,
            autoCenter: Phaser.Scale.CENTER_BOTH,
            parent: "thegame",
            width: 640,
            height: 480
        },
        physics: {
            default: "arcade",
            arcade: {
                gravity: {
                    y: 0
                }
            }
        },
       scene: playGame
    }
    game = new Phaser.Game(gameConfig);
}
class playGame extends Phaser.Scene{
    constructor(){
        super("PlayGame");
    }
    preload(){
        this.load.tilemapTiledJSON("level", "level.json");
        this.load.image("tile", "tile.png");
        this.load.image("hero", "hero.png");
    }
    create(){

        // creation of "level" tilemap
        this.map = this.make.tilemap({
            key: "level"
        });

        // add tiles to tilemap
        let tile = this.map.addTilesetImage("tileset01", "tile");

        // which layers should we render? That's right, "layer01"
        this.layer = this.map.createStaticLayer("layer01", tile);

        // layer (wall) is enabled for collision
        this.layer.setCollision(1);

        // add the hero sprite and enable arcade physics for the hero
        this.hero = this.physics.add.sprite(260, 376, "hero");

        // make hero bounce
        this.hero.setBounce(1);

        // set hero velocity
        this.hero.setVelocity(gameOptions.heroSpeed * Math.cos(Math.PI / 4), gameOptions.heroSpeed * Math.sin(Math.PI / 4));

        // listener for input
        this.input.on("pointerdown", this.changeDirection, this);

        // set world bounds to allow camera to follow the hero
        this.cameras.main.setBounds(0, 0, 1920, 1440);

        // make the camera follow the hero
        this.cameras.main.startFollow(this.hero);
    }

    // method to make the change direction
    changeDirection(){

        // invert hero y velocity
        this.hero.body.velocity.y *= -1;
    }

    // method to be executed at each frame
    update(){

        // handle collision between hero and tiles
        this.physics.world.collide(this.hero, this.layer);

        // flip hero according to direction
        this.hero.flipX = this.hero.body.velocity.x < 0;
    }
}

Obviously the original game has a lot of additional features, but this is how I’d build player movement and collision detection. Download the source code.