Devlog #1: giving my little bomber a personality

Hi! I'm Alex, a solo dev, and this is the thread where I'll keep posting progress on BOMBBONK: Bomberman × Megabonk. You drop cross-shaped bombs, step out of the blast, level up into wilder bombs, break the three seals on each layer and drop down the shaft to the next one. It's free to play in the browser (and on Windows, Mac and Linux): https://n3at18.itch.io/bombbonk

This week was all about the hero.

He got cuter. Bigger helmet, stubby legs, round boots, chunky mitts, and a rebuilt scarf and cape that now swing with spring physics. The animations are now proper clips with squash and stretch on jumps and landings, and he blinks.

He reacts now. His face follows what's going on: worried when a fuse is about to go or he's on his last hearts, focused with a guardian close, smug on a kill, happy on a pickup. His head turns toward whatever matters most, like the bomb that's about to go off.

My favourite: the uh-oh moment. Drop a bomb, back yourself into a dead end... He turns to the bomb, clutches his helmet, looks left and right, then turns to the camera and shrugs. If the blast catches him, he comes out covered in soot with a smoking helmet. You keep full control the whole time, so you can still try to escape.

All of this lands in the next build.

What's next: a voice for him (little grunts and yelps), and giving the guardians some personality too.

Thanks for reading! Tell me what you'd like him to react to next.

Devlog #2: new build, a clearer first run, and a little YouTube experiment

A new build (0.1.2) is up, free in the browser and on Windows, Mac and Linux: https://n3at18.itch.io/bombbonk

What's new:

- A clearer start. I realised new players might not get that bombs are your only weapon, so the first run now opens on "BOMBS ONLY!" and a prompt that stays up until you drop your first bomb: F or Left Click to drop it, then run out of its cross.

- Fewer interruptions. Level-ups came way too often and kept breaking the flow, so early on they're now about half as frequent.

- Personality. The little bomber reacts now: he panics when he traps himself with his own bomb, waves awkwardly when he walks into a room full of guardians, naps if you leave him alone, and says a few words. The guardians got feelings too: they spot you, stare, sweat and get angry.

A side experiment: I've been posting short clips to YouTube Shorts to see what people actually respond to. So far it's pretty clear: not the mechanics, but personality and emotion. The clip where he realises he's trapped himself did best. Here's one:

If you're trying something similar, what has worked for you on Shorts or TikTok? I'd love to compare notes. And if you like the little guy, a follow or a like here helps a lot. Thanks for reading!

Devlog #3: my first real playtest went badly, and here's what I'm changing

I paid for a remote playtest: a stranger on a Windows laptop played BOMBBONK in the browser for 15 minutes while talking out loud. It was humbling.

Fun 3.5 stars, but "would play again" and "would recommend" got 1.5. And the little guy I'd spent days giving a personality? "Round head bomber. No not really."

What went wrong:

• He was playing an old build. My itch page was still serving a version from before the browser performance fixes, so the page froze when he hit fullscreen and the game lagged for the first few minutes ("pretty unplayable"). That's fixed: the page now runs the current build.
• He didn't know how not to die. He kept blowing himself up and said it "needs a tutorial level or something".
• Kick seemed broken, and for good reason: it only reached 2.8 m, but a tile is 3 m.
• He couldn't understand the upgrade cards ("arms two, count one"?).
• Too many enemies, too fast, while he was still learning the controls.

What's coming in the next build:

• A guided first layer that teaches one thing at a time: drop a bomb, GET OUT OF THE CROSS, kick, one slow guardian, a seal, then the goal. Your own blasts don't hurt you until you've got it, and you can skip it.

• Upgrade cards in plain words: what it does, and the numbers before and after ("Bombs at once 1 → 2").

• Kick that works, plus a "nothing to kick" hint when you press E with no bomb nearby.
• Remote bombs are gone. They confused me too.
• Bigger hearts, and only slow guardians on the first layer.
• Each layer deeper gets its own colours, so layer 2 no longer looks like layer 1.

My lesson: watch a stranger play before polishing anything else. I'll run another session on the new build and post how it goes.

Has a playtest ever flipped your priorities like this? I'd love to hear about it.

Devlog #4: the second playtest came back, and it's a whole different story

Right after my rough first playtest, the second session came in. Another stranger, Windows, 18 minutes in the browser, talking out loud the whole time:

Fun 4.5, would play again 5, would recommend 5. And my favourite line from the video: "I've never seen Bomberman look this cool before."

What he enjoyed: the pickup sound ("really satisfying"), the music, the boss ("is this a boss?", then "pretty fun" once he won), and homing bombs ("takes care of everything"). He ended with "This was a lot of fun."

He hit the same lag as the first player. Both were on an old build my itch page was still serving by mistake. That's fixed: the page runs the current build, and I'm doing another performance pass on top.

What I'm adding from his feedback:

• Gamepad support. He wanted to play with a controller, and only the D-pad did anything. Proper controller support is next.
• Upgrade descriptions that tell you what each one does. That's already in the next build, together with a guided first layer, kick that works, and bigger hearts.
• A label on the XP counter: he didn't know what "21/92" meant.
• Seals that read as the goal at a glance.

Two playtests, same build, opposite verdicts. One player got stuck in the first few minutes; the other got past them and found the game. That tells me the game is there, and the first five minutes are my job now.

Do you play this kind of game with a controller or keyboard and mouse? I'd love to know.