Turtle Swimmer
Endless Runner (Mobile)
Overview
Turtle Swimmer is a mobile endless runner where the player collects food while avoiding plastic that deliberately resembles food. The game uses playful visuals and damage feedback to raise awareness about plastic pollution.
Challenge
The main challenge was aligning the awareness message with fun, readable mobile gameplay:
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Making plastic look similar to food without making the game feel unfair.
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Communicating mistakes clearly through immediate visual feedback (bruises/bandages) in a playful art style.
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Building an endless runner loop with scalable spawns and difficulty while keeping performance stable on mobile.
Approach
As lead programmer, I focused on systems that support clarity and scaling:
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Implemented lane-based movement and responsive input for mobile.
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Built a spawning system for food and plastic with scaling difficulty over time.
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Implemented scoring and pickup logic tied to player feedback.
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Created a damage-state visual system (bruises/bandages) that updates as plastic is collected.
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Tuned spawn ratios and timing to maintain “looks like food” tension while preserving fairness.
Results
The spawn and scaling system maintained a consistent difficulty curve while preserving visual ambiguity between food and plastic.
The damage-state visuals (bruises and bandages) communicated player mistakes immediately without breaking the playful tone.
The scoring and lane-based input loop remained stable on mobile.