FLASH-BLIP

A fast-paced 2D game built with the LOVE framework. Dodge obstacles, survive as long as you can, and get the highest score.

The game is primarily oriented toward endless mode, where players aim for the highest possible score in an infinite survival challenge.

Levels are fully procedurally generated. The game features 100 unique levels, each built using a deterministic random seed to ensure consistent layouts of points and obstacles across runs. This replaces the previous 10 fixed levels with a scalable, replayable progression system that increases in difficulty and required blips from level 1 to 100.

*Inspired by the work of Kenta Cho*

How to Play

Objective

Jump to the next point and dodge the obstacles while jumping, don't let the player's square circle reach the bottom of the screen, collect the powerups and try to achieve the highest score. In Arcade mode, you can try to beat all the levels. For detailed in-game explanations, access the HELP menu.

Controls

• SPACE, RETURN, or left-click to blip/move to the next point.
• C or right-click to ping for powerup collection or phase shift when this powerup is active.
• ESC to pause, show the menu, or quit.
• Use the up and down arrow keys to navigate through menu options, and press Enter or Space to select one.
• R to restart.
• For Android, touch the screen to blip and hold the screen or use two simultaneous touches to ping.

You can also use a Game Controller.

Powerups

There are 6 in total: 3 active that the player activates on pickup, and 3 passive that provide ongoing benefits.

• Active Powerups:

  • Star: Grants 10 seconds of invulnerability, allowing safe passage through obstacles.
  • Hourglass: Shrinks and slows the orbiting obstacles around points, slows the player's fall scroll speed, and nearly stops the player below 80% of the screen height, lasting 10 seconds.
  • Phase Shift: Enables a larger faster ping that teleports the player to the next point upon contact with a ping or the next point, ignoring obstacles, lasting 10 seconds.

• Passive Powerups:

  • Bolt: Creates a lightning bolt around two-thirds of the way down the screen. When the player touches it, they are instantly teleported safely to the next point, preventing a fall to the bottom. The effect lasts for 30 seconds.
  • Score Multiplier: Multiplies the score by 4x while active, lasting 30 seconds.
  • Spawn Rate Boost: Doubles the rate of random powerup generation, lasting 30 seconds.

Powerups are collected via pinging (right-click, C key, or holding the screen in Android) or blipping over them.

Technical Details

The endless mode initializes with random obstacle generation for replayability, drawing from procedural algorithms in game.lua. The game uses no external assets; all visuals are rendered using simple geometric shapes (e.g., rectangles, circles) via LOVE's drawing primitives.

Fonts are custom-drawn as pixel-based matrices in font.lua, allowing for lightweight, code-generated typography without bitmap files. Reference text.lua for how text is rendered and positioned in-game.

Background music is generated procedurally using pure Lua code, via LOVE's audio APIs and algorithmic composition(reference music.lua), no audio assets are required.

On Android builds the glow shader strength is reduced to 1, so it runs smoothly, OpenGL ES is not as performant with the glow shader as a PC. The Gaussian blur shader is also disabled on mobile to improve performance.

As the web version is mostly used by people on their phones, the glow shader strength is reduced and the Gaussian blur is disabled (same as the mobile version), pending a way to detect the operating system from the web build.

The web version uses love.js and hasn't been fully tested yet. If you notice any strange behavior, please open an issue on the GitHub repository

Development Status

The game remains in active development. It now features 100 procedurally generated levels with deterministic random seeds, ensuring consistent layouts for each level across runs. An endless mode is also included, with procedurally generated circles, rotating obstacles, and powerups such as slow motion and teleportation. Scoring mechanics and intuitive menus are in place, and future updates may include an online scoreboard for tracking top scores and competitive progression.

License

MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

https://github.com/plinkr/flash-blip

local difficulty = 1.0 + (level_index - 1) * (3.5 - 1.0) / (Settings.MAX_LEVELS - 1)