What did you revive? What was your inspiration?
I revived my own game Bounzy Ballz, a small mobile ball shooter I started in 2021 as my first real game project. With my friends Cytexx and Bantol (together we are SharkBlaster) it grew over the years and got a test version on the Play Store. Around 2023 work stalled, and it sat on the shelf until this jam brought it back.

The inspiration came from years of playtesting. The bouncing ball was always the fun part. The endless mode was the favourite. Players got bored just watching the ball fly and wanted to do something. Playing with a dance mat showed that three buttons are enough. And one comment kept coming up: "This feels like pinball."

So I kept the ball physics everyone loved and added two flipper arms that hit the ball back into the field. Bounzy Ballz finally became the neon pinball game it was always meant to be. Modifier: Early to bed, late to rise. The pinball version was built in under 10 days.

How do you play your game? Is controller required?
No controller required. The game works with keyboard, mouse, controller or even a dancepad, and you only need three buttons: Left, Right and Confirm.

- Aim: the arrow swings by itself. Press Confirm to lock the direction.
- Charge: keep holding Confirm, the power swings up and down. Release to shoot.
- Flip: Left and Right swing their flipper arm at any time, even while aiming.
- Hit shapes for points, break them for a bonus and keep your combo going.
- You start with 3 hearts. A ball that drops out costs one heart. With no hearts left, the game is over.
- Survive as long as you can, beat the boss and climb the online leaderboard. Your points become $ for new ball colours and arenas in the shop.

Keyboard: Left = ← / A / Left Shift, Right = → / D / Right Shift, Confirm = Space / Enter / ↓, Menu = Esc
Mouse: Left = left button, Right = right button, Confirm = middle button
Controller: Left = D-pad left / LB / LT, Right = D-pad right / RB / RT, Confirm = A / B / X / Y / D-pad down

What asset packs did you use? What, if any, content is AI generated?
Asset packs: none. The original graphics were made by SharkBlaster (Bantol and Cytexx), and I composed the music myself. Some single free assets come from Pixabay (Pixabay Content License): a few arena background patterns and sound effects (including "Arcade UI" by floraphonic, "Coin Collect Retro 8-bit" by Lesiakower, and "Pinball Hall Of Fame 3" by ericdarnell and "Electric Sparks" by kev_durr via Freesound). Fonts: Digital-7 by Style-7, Anoxic SC by deFharo, Bahnschrift by Microsoft and Liberation Sans (SIL OFL). The full list with authors is on the game page.

AI: there are no AI-generated images, music or sounds. I coded the original game myself over the years, including the complete ball physics. For the jam, a large part of the new code (pinball mechanics, quests, save system, online leaderboard, build tools) was written together with Claude Code, an AI coding assistant. The new graphics (flipper arms, bumpers, item icons and rings, the 15 new arenas and the cover image) were drawn by small scripts I wrote with Claude Code's help. They are built from simple geometric shapes placed by code, not with an AI image generator. Game design, playtesting and all decisions are my own.