Juggle Tap is a casual game where you tap the screen to move a ball around the screen, avoiding obstacles for as long as possible. You could travel to the end of the level in Race, travel as far up as you can in Rise, or keep the ball up for as long as possible in Classic Mode.
Juggle Tap 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.
Juggle Tap was my eighth mobile game, made immediately after finishing and releasing Leaf Buster, between September and October 2023, releasing later in November. It follows the same design processes and ideas that I developed between Mountain Rush and Leaf Buster, and I'm really proud of it. It is the first game I made to introduce different gamemodes, though I think the 2 alternative modes, Rise and Race, aren't as good as Classic, and I could've spent a little bit more time on them. Similarly to Leaf Buster, the graphics are my favourite part. I'm really happy with my design for the coloured balls, mashing together a beach ball, baseball and tennis ball. I also really like the different backdrops, especially the default Beach and the Purple Sports Hall. I continued with UI animations and particle effects, and particularly like how the ball collision particle effect turned out. The most difficult part of the game's development was the Missiles. The graphic isn't great, it looks like a black fish, and I originally wanted to have different versions that changed direction and moved towards the player, but I kept running into difficult bugs, and eventually decided it wasn't worth it, and having them move in straight lines makes the game a bit more manageable overall. The timer in Race Mode also had some hiccups, and I think having it display to 2 decimal places in real time was a mistake, it just keeps juttering around to stay in the middle of the screen and distracts from the gameplay. I do like the precision that it gives for players' highscores, and it allows closer competition without tied scores.
In all 3 gamemodes, the main part of the game is controlling the ball in the way you want to. The ball is affected by gravity, but can be kept in the air by tapping below it. Tapping anywhere on the screen effectively knocks the ball away from the tap, but it is a single force, so tapping to the bottom right while the ball is accelerating downwards due to gravity will knock it over to the left, but it may continue to fall down, just a but slower. Tapping too much will cause the ball to fly around the screen very quickly, bouncing off walls and obstacles and potentially into spiked obstacles or missiles if the player isn't careful. The playing area is the same size on all devices, covering the full screen on narrower phones, with the left and right edges cropped with a brown striped border on wider phones and tablets.
There are 3 different gamemodes in Juggle Tap, the first of my games to have alternate gamemodes. They are Classic, Rise and Race. In Classic you need to keep the ball in the air in a still picture for as long as possible, avoiding the spiked obstacles that may be moving or rotating in place and the missiles that fly in from the left and right sides of the screen. You gain points for each second that passes. In Rise, you need launch your ball as far upwards as possible, similar to Doodle Jump, where the camera follows your ball upwards, but not downwards, so your run ends if the ball falls below the camera picture. Missiles can still spawn, but can only move left and right, so flying past them is fairly trivial, however blocks also appear along your path. Spiky blocks will end your run, but unspiked blocks could bounce your ball back down very quickly if you aren't careful. In Race, a random series of obstacles generate in a horizontal level, where the player has a timer counting upwards and needs to navigate to the right to reach the finish in the fastest time possible.
There are 20 different Themes and 20 different Balls, most resembling a different sport or colour. The themes are Beachball, Cricket, Tennis, Volleyball, Ping Pong, Baseball, Basketball and Football, each with their respective ball unlocked separately. The coloured themes and balls are Orange, Dark Blue, Green, Purple, Yellow, Pink, Red and Blue. There are 4 “Epic” Themes, each unlocked as a bundle, together with its Ball though an In-App Purchase. They are Future, British, Cookie and Money, the same as in Leaf Buster, but the falling object is now the ball. The sports-based themes usually depict the place where you would play that sport, a beach for Beachball, a cricket pitch, tennis court, volleyball court, sports hall for Ping Pong, baseball stadium, indoor basketball court and football stadium. As in Leaf Buster, the Future theme depicts a night-time skyscraper lit up with neon lights, with a coloured ball. The British theme depicts the Elizabeth Tower (more commonly known by the name of the bell inside, Big Ben) with a biscuit as the ball. The Cookie theme depicts a large dough-like structure with triangular chocolate chips and a smaller cookie as the ball. The Money theme depicts a bank in the background with a coin as the ball.
