RetroJump

RetroJump is a super simplistic endless runner designed for mobile devices. Its basic visual design and intuitive game mechanics makes it easy for anyone to pickup and understand in seconds. Collect powerups to continue jumping, avoid obstacles, and see how high you can climb!

One control: TAP

One action: JUMP

One direction: UP

One goal: ASCEND

Inspired by many other endless runners and simplistic mobile games, RetroJump was built to be as easy as possible for new players to pickup and understand in seconds. From the very start the game was designed to be as minimalistic and intuitive as possible without sacrificing the game's enjoyability.

The color scheme of RetroJump is simple; the player and the powerups they want to collect are the same light color while all the things the player wants to avoid are also the same, but much darker, color. The powerups are all circular to indicate safety while all the obstacles are pointy to indicate danger. The only two UI elements on screen during gameplay convey your current score (attached to the endlessly rising floor) and number of jumps remaining (Attached to the player for visibility). Tapping anywhere on the screen causes you to jump and reverse your direction of travel which serves as your only method of controlling your character. The game can be picked up and put down at any time by anyone and its random generation enables endless replayability.

This project was developed over the course of a few months. Interestingly, the vast majority of time spent developing this game was focused on tweaking and even removing features to maintain the game's minimalism and intuitive design. The initial mechanics (jumping, reverse directions, obstacles, powerups, random generation) was build in 2 days.