Show HN: Bubbles, a vanilla JavaScript web game (opens in new tab)

Nice.

It took me a few times to realize that I could do bombs or slingshots by clicking in empty space. The tutorial makes it look like you have to click on a bubble. Maybe the black circle in the tutorial should be removed?

I also got a little confused in the beginning about par vs lives. At first it seemed like par was the only important thing, since that's what pops up after the level. The lives icon at the bottom wasn't particularly noticeable to me. I just kind of figured there were only N levels, until I finally realized that dropping bubbles was making me lose lives.

Edit: Oh, and you can multi-touch and set off multiple slingshots at once! Secrets secrets...

Really well built, and I love the tutorial...

BUT

Jeepers, it starts off so hard compared to the tutorial.

1. I was not expecting bubbles to move (since they are all static in the tutorial).

2. I wasn't expecting a golf/par scoring thing.

3. I didn't realise you could (and should) start powering up during the countdown at the start.

4. Took me a long time to realise you can just click quickly to create bubbles, without having to do the aim-and-shoot thing.

5. Straight away I felt like I was being insulted by having my score described as "Disaster" etc.

6. There's no way to get back to the tutorial.

So overall, I'd say:

- there are fun mechanics here

- it's good there is a tutorial

- but the tutorial did not prepare me for the game

- the game felt too hard too quickly and mean

Slick as silk! But too fast too quickly. Gimme some easy endorphin in the first few levels before I start struggling.

A touchpad seems to really cripple the gameplay -- one idea could be to ask what device players are using and make slight adjustments. For touchpads, moving the cursor is slower, and the drag-pull mechanism doesnt really work -- and its easy to misclick a drag.

Some rougelike mechanics would also make it possible to naturally level the gameplay -- ie., the more failures a person has the more metaprogression they get, so worse players unlock a natural easy mode.

Yes, as other commenters have said, this game is a great example of the design error where the tutorial careful prepares the player for not-this-game. There’s another game out there somewhere that the tutorial has made us competent to play. Meanwhile we need a different tutorial for this game.

Really nice interactions. A bit too fast paced for my iPhone Mini, and I have no idea what this “par” and “bogey” stuff means (is it golf lingo?), but looks promising!

The tutorial has zero in common with the actual gameplay. Why would you do that? It's not a good onboarding experience. It just creates frustration.

Really cool stuff, ehmorris. Your work harkens back to the early days of the web when bundlers and minifiers were the exception, rather than the rule. Work like this can really help beginners understand how powerful vanilla JavaScript can be by just looking at your source!

One neat thing you can do is embed an SVG favicon in your html page, which will be properly rendered at all resolutions on all major browsers - plus it saves another sub-resource request. Here is the favicon at https://simpatico.io/svg

  <link id="favicon" rel="icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="data:image/svg+xml,
  <svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 1 1'>
      <rect width='1' height='1' fill='DodgerBlue' />
  </svg>"/>

This can help you make your already clean source even cleaner and delete some subresources. Cheers!

Way too hard for me to be enjoyable.

In my phone, Samsung A14 5G, I have to touch screen below falling bubble to blow it. If I touch the exact location, it is too late.

Cool!

Feedback: the concept of “lives” spoils the fun for me; I’d like to retry a level without having to replay earlier ones.

In desktop, dragging outside of the square canvas (and of course outside the windows) doesn't quite work.

I wonder how you would fix this, I think you could "capture" the cursor, and use esc to return it, not sure if that works in the browser.

(shameless plug) Another JavaScript you might like https://make210.com/ (I'm the author). Do "Restart -> Hard" for a challenge.

I want to be able to replay a level, don't force me into the next level.

I really don't understand the 4th level. Is it much easier on a touch screen? With a mouse I can't seem to intuitively set off a rocket or whatever that can get the cascading falling balls!

Your source is nice and clean[1]. No dependencies is a wonderful goal. Status quo is inherently always against innovation. I like the approach the Go team took of rethinking new solutions from first principles, and I hope you got to experience the joy of that in this project.

[1] https://github.com/ehmorris/bubbles/

A pleasant game, love it! Also, the name Bubbles reminds me of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33566924

Another fun game from the same author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35032506

Kind of makes me think of the trip-out sequence you get on https://packardbell95.com/fortune/ after you drink the soda, if you pop all of the carbonation bubbles on the page by clicking on them, you get made fun of in a pop-up for wasting your time

Looks neat... can't drag the ball in linux chrome (dragging works for me elsewhere), maybe I'll try later on my phone.

Fun little game. As others have said, the tutorial is nice, but very misleading compared to the actual game, and the game starts way too hard.

I beat Bubbles! 1951 over par overall

https://ehmorris.com/bubbles

Tapped 90 times: 0 hits, 90 misses Launched 2202 slingshots Detonated 1 blast

Love this game! Took me quite a few tries to get through levels 15 & 16. But when I finally did, I was only 1 over par! 3 missed taps, 77 launched slingshots, 13 detonated blasts.

Your code is such a fresh air after being subject to a decade of bloat. Thanks.

Cool game! at first I thought it's an "aim trainer" of some sorts :D I forgot about everything (slings and bombs) besides clicking and tried to click all the way through.

I beat Bubbles! 368 over par overall

https://ehmorris.com/bubbles

Tapped 8 times: 2 hits, 6 misses Launched 444 slingshots Detonated 55 blasts

Fun game! Getting some errors trying to set the velocity of balls: https://i.imgur.com/fXOJ7UT.png

Wow, incredible work! It seems quite novel to me and was super fast to learn and instantly fun to play! Did you consider wrapping it in a mobile mobile app to try and make a few bucks?

Also please add more levels and I’ll enjoy even more! I do think this could easily make some decent money as a mobile app.

Beautiful JS code, happy to see this after people started to create DOOM using TypeScript types.

Edit: yay, beat all levels after learning I can use slingshot multiple times

Having to restart over and over kills it for me. I’d much rather be able to repeat a level until I got it perfect then move on.

it would be nice if i could save my progress at every level so i could just keep working on one level at a time.

Absolutely love the sound design on this.

Way too fast to start with. Is it design for phones? Because on desktop it is moving way too fast

Great onboarding. Super smooth. Why isn't there a try again even if you succeed. Congrats

Cool game. Tutorial is easy, but difficult to progress.

so what are those bubbles? divs with a border-radius of 50% that transform X and Y with random values? how is this implemented?

too hard

and when trying to do a slingshot it's easy for the mouse to go outside the app and then the shot gets stuck without firing

Pretty slick experience from Mobile Safari!

This game is so good! Played on my iPhone

beat the game with 31 over par overall. im on an iphone 16 pro.

touchscreen users have huge edge over desktop for sure.

Good old fashioned addiction

input delay heavy on mobile browser, otherwise nice!