Leaf Buster is a casual game where you have to tap leaves to destroy them before they hit your defence. If they hit your defence, they will do damage, and when it completely breaks, the game is over. You can upgrade your defence with tokens, and unlock new themes as you level up.
Leaf Buster 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.
Leaf Buster was the seventh mobile game I made, but after a significant gap after my sixth game, Mountain Rush. Over this time I developed a much more detailed and thought through process for designing and developing games, and so Leaf Buster was made between May and August 2023, before releasing in September 2023, almost a year after Mountain Rush's release in the previous November. I'm really pleased with how much my 2D graphic design skills improved for this game, My favourite part of designing this game was making all the different leaves and backdrops. It was really fun to research different types of trees of different colours and work out how to make them pop in a low-poly style, my first time using this style. I also liked learning how to make animations for the UI menus and particle effects for the leaves' collisions with the logs, also a first for me.
The main objective of the game is to stop leaves from hitting your “defence”, a tower of logs at the bottom of the screen. Leaves spawn randomly at the top of the screen, falling a random speeds, and the player can tap them to break them into 2 smaller pieces. There are 3 different sizes of leaf, and when the player taps the smallest size, it breaks entirely and doesn't damage your defence. The score ticks up every second that the player survives, and the game ends when a leaf hits the base of the defence, underneath all the logs. This creates a game of frantic tapping the screen to keep destroying leaves as quickly as possible. The game can be paused at any time, though a run cannot be returned to after going to the main menu or closing the app. The different themes do slightly affect the gameplay, as the hitbox for the purposes of the leaves hitting the defence is the same as the leaf's image, and so varies from theme to theme. However, the hitbox for tapping the leaves is the same for all themes, and doesn't perfectly match the shape of the leaf's image.
There are 3 different difficulties for players to choose from, Simple, described in-game as being “for non-gamers, a basic experience”, Casual, which is “for casual gamers, a normal experience”, and finally Hardcore, which is “for experienced gamers, a challenging experience”. The player has a different highscore for each of the 3 different difficulties, as the game is notably different, most clearly in the rate that leaves spawn.
There are 16 different themes in the game, Oak is the default theme, Maple, Pine, Birch, Green, Dark Blue, Pink, Yellow, Orange, Purple, Red and Blue can be unlocked by levelling up. The player “levels up” by tapping leaves, and they can see their progress towards the next level and therefore Theme in the Themes menu. The 4 “Epic” Themes, Future, British, Cookie and Money can be unlocked through In-App Purchases. The tree themes are fairly self-explanatory, the coloured themes either have a tree with leaves of that colour or some other kind of vertical structure, like a crane for Yellow or a volcano for Red. Each theme has it's own design of leaves (or falling objects, as is the case for the non-tree themes). Most leaves match the tree that they share a theme with, like Maple leaves in the Maple theme. The Epic themes are more unique, the Future theme depicts a night-time skyscraper lit up with neon lights, with smartphones as the falling object. The British theme depicts the Elizabeth Tower (more commonly known by the name of the bell inside, Big Ben) with biscuits as the falling object. The Cookie theme depicts a large dough-like structure with triangular chocolate chips and smaller cookies as the falling object. The Money theme depicts a bank in the background, with coins as the falling object.
Similar to Plank Spin and Bouncy Bird, you can purchase upgrades to make it more possible to make deeper runs for higher scores in all 3 difficulties. There are 3 types of upgrades, Tapping, Defence and Gravity. Upgrading “Tapping” increases the chance that a big leaf will break into 2 small leaves rather than 2 medium leaves, and the chance that a medium leaf will break with one tap, rather than splitting into 2 small leaves. This means fewer taps are needed to clear the screen, and fewer leaves hit the defence. Upgrading “Defence” increases the number of times each log in the defence can be hit before it is destroyed and upgrading “Gravity” reduces the gravity, so leaves fall slower, giving you more time to tap them before they hit your defence. All of these upgrades are purchases with Tokens, which you are automatically awarded at the end of each run based on the number of points scored in that run.
