Hoop Flyer
Game Overview
Tap to flap your flying basketball and swoosh through the fiery hoops. How many swishes can you hit before you miss or fall out of the sky?
How to Play
Tap the screen to flap your basketball up. Gravity pulls you down. You must fall down through the rims to score points. Missing a hoop or falling out of the screen costs a life. Get consecutive swishes for big combo multipliers or collect power-up hoops for fireballs and extra lives!
About Hoop Flyer
This one was Jacob's idea. He's seven, he loves basketball and he loves Flappy Bird, and one afternoon he asked me, very seriously, why nobody had ever combined them. (In fairness, other developers have, but he didn't know that, and his version is better anyway.) The game is credited to him because the design really is his. He came up with the flying basketball, the hoops you have to fall through from above, fireballs as power-ups, and combo points for nothing-but-net swishes. I just typed.
The trick to scoring real combos is to not tap on the way down. Your instinct is to keep tapping for control, but every tap pushes the ball up, and that makes a clean drop straight through the centre of the hoop nearly impossible. Tap until you're at the right height above the hoop, then let go and let gravity do the scoring. Three swishes in a row turns on the fireball multiplier, and that's where the silly-high scores come from.
His original spec
When we started, Jacob gave me his requirements, and these are his exact words: "the basketball has to be on fire when you're doing good", "it has to make the swoosh sound", and "if you fall out of the sky you should bounce". The first two made it into the game. The third one didn't. If you fall, you just die. He has accepted this, mostly.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's a 'swish' and why do they matter?
A swish is when the ball passes through the hoop without touching the rim. Three swishes in a row activates the fireball multiplier, which is the only realistic way to get a really high score.
Why does my ball die when I tap too late?
Gravity is constant. Once you've fallen below the hoop, no amount of tapping pulls you back up in time. Tap a little earlier than feels right.
Was this really designed by a 7-year-old?
Yes. The design (flying basketball, fireball power-ups, score-on-the-fall) was all my son's idea. Dad just wrote the code.
Can I play with one hand on mobile?
Yep, that's the whole control scheme: one tap, anywhere on the screen. Perfect on the bus.