BombermanJS, a new take on the classic Nintendo game

Background

This 2D game consists of one player, whose movement and actions are key-responsive, vs an AI. The objective of the game is to drop bombs that explode after a delay and eliminate your opponent by catching them in one of your explosions. The AI will use the player’s current location and location of all currently dropped bombs to decide where to move and when to drop a bomb. When a player is in range of a bomb explosion, that player is eliminated and the game is over.

Technologies

For this project, I utilized CanvasAPI for image rendering and Vanilla JS DOM manipulation for the game play, which includes key-responsive players, asynchronous functions and efficient canvas updating. I also incorporated Web Audio API in order to add background music and sound effects to the game.

Development

The initial idea for how this project would be implemented came from a functional wireframe detailing the game rules and relevant board objects. CanvasAPI seemed a natural choice for the project, as I have used it before to create other games. Initially, I struggled with drawing images to the canvas, as I had previously used CanvasAPI several years ago in a different programming language. With a little research, I was able to quell that issue relatively quickly. After that, the development of the game was pretty straight forward.

I used DOM manipulation to set up buttons with game starting and muting functions. The instructions clearly layout how the game is played and what the ultimate objective is. The AI runs on an asynchronous interval that checks the location of all bombs on the board and avoids moving towards them. It is also programmed to drop bombs at nearby destroyable bricks. In the coming days, I plan on implementing a more sophisticated AI that prioritizes spaces to move that are closer to the player and drops bombs within a certain range of the player.

After implementing the logic for general gameplay and game resolution, I added multiple game enhancements. The first one I developed was a power-up that increased the range of a player or AI's bombs for a set period of time. That one posed some interesting bugs. One in particular involved explosions not registering in spaces they should have due to the way I had set up the initial function and corresponding explosion vectors. The second power-up was a bit easier, as I had cleaned up bugs that would have affected it with the first power-up. It allowed a player or AI to have no limit to how many bombs they could drop at one time (typically a player can only drop one at a time and must wait for a detonation).