Trampoline Game / Bounce with Friends

[Josh_W]

TL;DR here game Trampoline Game (itch.io/bounce-with-friends)

This is my first game I made, right after making the “Your First 2D Game” from the docs. I started this in July 2025, with some breaks of messing with different nodes / side projects, lurking the forum, and learning some programming things.

@FencerDevLog I used your pixelated shader - thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. I will give credit to YouTuber Bitlytic for sharing Finite State Machines and Modular Upgrades, even though I don’t exactly use a FSM right now (a previous build did but I couldn’t get it to export and frankly am giving up on it).

I have always wanted to make a video game, but most programming escaped me. Godot is a great tool, and I am thankful it is here.

Anyway, here is my first game - Bounce with Friends / Trampoline Game. Its just an incremental game (didn’t know that was a thing until recent) about bouncing on a trampoline until you reach the moon. The controls are simple, press and hold spacebar / left mouse button / touchscreen, time your release with a timing bar (aim for the yellow!) and voila. Press “ui_right” or “ui_left” or touch the right side / left side of the screen to do a flip (use your imagination).

Use your points gained to upgrade you / your trampoline until you reach space! (theres only one upgrade available right now which is the teal one with an arrow pointing up that says “Jump Power”)

Once you get to the moon the game just is stuck at the end - so feel free to quit. And right now the game is short - it can be beaten in 5 jumps.

There is plenty I want to add and I hope you all will enjoy my game. Its available on itch as a web game - phone preferred.

[Frozen_Fried]

That’s an awesome game! The graphics is kind of silly, but it’s cool!

It needs some polishing such as the buttons and home screen.

Also I would suggest you to make the jump mat physics based! It’s only an animated sprite right now.

[FencerDevLog]

Looks fun! I’ll try it out soon.

[Josh_W]

Thank you, both! Making the trampoline physics based crossed my mind, but I figured I should probably make a fun game before I make a physics simulation. The next thing I will do is re-implement the remaining power ups. After that I will fix up the main menu.

[ComicallyUnfunny]

For your first game, well done!
If you want to improve your art, I suggest learning a bit of color theory. In particular, your colors are extremely saturated on the grass, and it’ll likely hurt users’ eyes.
The game itself was pretty fun, and the art does have a bit of charm, especially the roll animation, which was pretty funny. Leaning into humor can definitely add character to a simple artstyle such as yours (and my own).

[Josh_W]

Thanks for trying my game! Yes, the lawn is a retina burning green. I did start redrawing but I always get burnt out because I don’t know what “progress” looks like / feels like with art. But making a guy bounce on a trampoline, I feel the progress there. I’ll keep at it though, and will look into color theory.

[ComicallyUnfunny]

I suggest dividing art into stages. Personally, this is how I do it. First, I draw the outlines, and I make sure the illustration looks nice even before color is added. Next, I add color blockouts, focusing on a color palette and using color theory. Finally, I add shading and highlights. No matter how bad the art (but yours isn’t actually bad at all), a consistent style is key to a good-looking game. Stick to the same line thickness, the same style, same brush settings, the same 20 or so colors, and so on. It makes a big difference.

[gold_angel_corp]

take a look on some tutorials on pinterest about pixel art if you want develop 2D game. there is a plenty of tutorials about it. Cheers!

[Josh_W]

I am just about finished with the power ups. You will be able to increase your flip speed, get extra bounces, decrease your mass, use a jet pack, and slow down the bounce timer for easier perfect jumps (bullet time). I also increased the height in order for you to reach the moon.

I am facing an unexpected problem with altering the gravity scale of the player for lower gravity, but I am also hacking at this anyway. I am going to implement a system where purchases made at the shop take effect once the session begins.

The main menu is still lacking, but not silly anymore.

[Josh_W]

Another functional update, I promise to hone my art skills after this!

I made an inventory system. After purchasing upgrades from the shop, they are placed in an inventory. Before starting the next session, you can choose to continue or pack powers you purchased into your backpack. Your backpack can only hold 4 items, but they can stack up to 3 times!

The game flows like this: you bounce a certain amount of times, a “window” for session results appear, you congratulate yourself on getting all perfect jumps, you then “walk” to the shop, spend points, pick which powers you want to bring for the next session, “walk” back to center screen, and then you press spacebar to start a new round. The cycle continues!

[hunne]

I like the simple concept and clean controls. The trampoline physics feel fun, and the upgrade system adds motivation to keep bouncing higher. This is a great first project to showcase on your portfolio. The inventory system with 4 slots is a smart design choice that adds strategy without overwhelming players. I’ve noticed that simple mechanics work best in mobile games, similar to how accessible options on https://pokiesman1.net/minimum-deposit/ make entertainment more approachable for casual users. Your progress from the tutorial to a full game is impressive. The timing bar mechanic reminds me of classic flash games. I agree with others about toning down the grass saturation. Keep working on this project because it has solid potential for the mobile market.

[Josh_W]

Thank you very much for the feedback! I am glad you appreciate the simple yet strategic power up / inventory system. I understand that most incremental games conclude with you just having 100% everything, so prioritizing upgrades ends up feeling like “but if i do this now i get a 50% increase” but in the end it won’t matter because everything ends up becoming 100% complete. I want my player to be able to say “I beat this game using such and such powers and it took my 10 jumps, maybe I can beat it sooner with other power ups, or long would it take me to do a purist complete with no powers?”

A little bit of inspiration for this game comes from the Space Race in the ~1960s. Eventually I would like to add a leader board, and the ability to see “ghosts” of other players jumping in your background. But I have conflicting thoughts on having this online and sharing data between users and some server.

unrelated to your comment, here is some artwork. I hope everyone finds the colors more appealing / easy to look at. (forgive me if these file sizes are jumbo sized)

[ComicallyUnfunny]

Solid work! I got a fairly lucky run of combos and got to the moon in just 6 jumps - consider adding a new moon level after that. It’d be simple, just change the grass image to a moon and the sky texture. Having more planets could be fun, and the new end goal could be to escape the solar system, with gravity being stronger on denser planets, maybe?

[Josh_W]

It never crossed my mind to try and leave the solar system, lol. I was thinking I would scale everything to make it harder to get off Earth. I want to have “you jumped over the Eiffel Tower!” or “You jumped over Mount Everest!” and have those be like trophies or something. But I guess I could extend that to “you jumped a distance from the Earth to the Sun!”

But above that, I do want my player to eventually beat the game without committing a lot of time to it, challenge their friends to beat their score, and get bored and stop playing. I don’t want to players put into a cycle of “just one more upgrade and I’ll reach Sirius!”

[ComicallyUnfunny]

A wholesome decision. Best of luck with that!

[Josh_W]

I updated the game on itch, Trampoline Game v0.0.3 please feel free to leave any feedback.

(Quick question is it better to post update things on my OP or add it to the thread as a new post? If you click on thread it brings you to the first post, right?)

I do regret this hasty update but I felt bad for anyone trying the game and looking at the harsh colors of the previous iteration. In return, there a few bugs and half-implemented features.

-problems-

I messed with the resolution and camera, because I wanted to have the camera zoom out and zoom in as you ascend and descend. But I only messed with the resolution, and that made my menus / buttons misplaced.

I don’t think the jetpack power works, because it’s not a separate object, it’s just a different animation for my player. It only works if the player is in the “use jetpack” state, and I think I change the state at the start of the session to “free fall"

You can’t remove a power up if your inventory is empty. I think it’s because the size of the grid is 0 when it’s empty, and _on_mouse_entered() wont trigger.

There is an Area2D right below the trampoline to start a new session that you will trigger when you reach a certain height because there isn’t a terminal velocity right now. With that, I don’t think the trampolinesbody entered and body exited are working as intended because the player is 2fast4u.

-diary-

Some aspects of the game felt like I was constructing stuff with nails and wood and actually built something to be proud of, like the timing arrows, the inventory, and the transition to the victory screen. But some things just feel like I had a glue stick (taste tested) and macaroni, like my gameplay loop and the bounce.

I am struggling figuring out how to script the loop of start game → jump 3 times → stop jumping → shop for upgrades → start new session months later.

The trampoline bounce feels like patchwork, too. It feels like there are too many moving parts with hiding the player, changing the trampoline animation and changing player properties. I tried a physics based approach but it is choppy because it gets triggered by area entered. Another thing I would like to attempt is reparenting the player to the trampoline to have them move together.

If you read all this, thank you for your time!

[ComicallyUnfunny]

Game freezes on the trampoline end screen. Maybe it crashed?

[Josh_W]

The player looks like it’s inside the area2d under the trampoline which you can press spacebar to start a new session at that point. The area is meant to be used as a signal to start a new session.

Or, the continue button is hiding in the text of the stats because I just slapped the button down and changed its position.

I will have to find time to fix it and even extra time if it’s actually crashing / freezing / hanging.

[ComicallyUnfunny]

Yes, I found the continue button now that you mention it.
After playing a while, I fell through the trampoline

and couldn’t play anymore.

[Josh_W]

Bounce with Friends by furiousfarter44

I think I fixed the “falling through the trampoline” issue now, there is a hacky terminal velocity so you shouldn’t ever fall crazy fast, and entering the area2d that would capture you forever.