Bippo Blast Planet: a free 2D platformer

What is Bippo Blast Planet?

Bippo Blast Planet is a free 2D platformer you play right in your browser, built in the spirit of the best world-map platformers: a hand-painted map full of branching paths, levels that hide secret exits, and controls that reward momentum. You play Bippo, a small, fearless junior rocket mechanic with oversized rocket boots, or her lanky best friend Fizz, on Planet Jamboree, a loud, candy-coloured world where the grass hums, the rivers fizz like soda and the mountains are frozen sherbet.

Then Dr. Dimmsworth Hush rises over the horizon in his Muffler Moon. He finds colour and music unbearably loud, so he drains the planet's Hubbub, shushes Bippo's mount Gulpo into a grey egg and hands the planet's Hubbub Bells to his Dimmer Crew. Bippo sets off across Sprinkle Shores and Fizzwood Grove to ring the Bells, rebuild her rocket, the Rattletrap, with Big Bolts and bring the noise back. This release contains the first two worlds: twenty levels, twenty-seven exits, four bosses and a hundred Big Bolts.

How to play Bippo Blast Planet

1. Move with the arrow keys or WASD and jump with Space (or Z). Tap Jump for a little hop and hold it for a big jump: you control the height. Hold Shift (or C) to run. Keep running and the six-pip Boost Gauge fills: at full gauge you sprint, your boots trail flames and your jumps go higher and farther.
2. Jump on enemies to stomp them. Chain stomps without touching the ground for escalating points and, from the eighth stomp on, extra lives. Press X for the Pinwheel spin jump: it bounces safely off spiky enemies and pops weak ones. In the air, press Down and X for a Thud ground pound that breaks Crumble Blocks and stuns nearby enemies; press Jump right after landing for a huge Thud-jump.
3. Hit Gift Crates from below. A Spark Plug makes you Big, a Chili Comet lets you throw bouncing peppers, a Comet Ribbon gives you a gliding Comet Tail that can take off and fly from a full Boost Gauge, and more forms await. A second power-up goes into your Pocket at the top of the screen; press Q to drop it down to you when you need it.
4. Hold Run while you touch a stunned enemy, a spinning top or a crate to pick it up, then let go to throw it. Hold Up to throw it straight up and catch it again. Touch a resting top without holding Run to kick it, and it bowls over everything in its path.
5. Ride Gulpo, a round, rubbery moon-anteater, by landing on his back. Press Run to slurp enemies and berries with his snout and again to spit them back out. Pinwheel hops off, and a Pinwheel at the very top of a jump is a Mount Kick that launches you even higher.
6. Reach the Finish Launchpad at the end of each level. Jump into the star sliding up and down the Launch Meter beside it for Party Points: the higher the star, the bigger the bonus. Break the Halfway Hoop to save your progress mid-level.
7. On a phone or tablet, your left thumb drives a floating stick anywhere on the left side (push it far to run) and your right thumb has Jump, Spin, Run and Pocket buttons. Slide your thumb between buttons without lifting it. Full screen gives you the biggest view, and the buttons can be moved and resized in Options.

Bippo Blast Planet tips and strategy

• Hold Jump as you land on an enemy for a full-height bounce. It is the key to stomp chains and to reaching high ledges.
• Jump while skidding (pressing the opposite direction at speed) for an about-face jump with full height. It is the quickest way to turn around under pressure.
• Coyote time and the jump buffer are generous: you can still jump a few frames after running off a ledge, and a jump pressed just before you land still happens.
• Big Bolts follow a rule: one sits on the main path but somewhere tricky, two need a little exploring and two need a secret or a skilful move. Look up, look down and question every suspicious wall.
• Every normal level hides four invisible Echo Marks, usually along an elegant high route. Touch all four in one run for an extra life; a soft ping tells you when you find one.
• Belly-slide by pressing Down on any slope. You knock over every enemy you touch, and the points chain like stomps.
• In Echo Houses, Shushers only move while you make noise. Walk, don't run, and land softly; the noise meter at the top shows how loud you are.
• Collected Big Bolts stay collected even if you lose a life, so a risky grab is never wasted.

Two worlds, twenty levels, twenty-seven exits

World 1, Sprinkle Shores, is a crescent bay of candy beaches and sprinkle-dusted dunes. It teaches the basics on Hello, Jamboree!, introduces the Chili Comet in Tidepool Trot, hatches Gulpo on Gulpo's Nest Hill, goes underground in Fizzpop Burrow, hushes you in the Seashell Concert Hall, rides Kitebirds over Kite Breeze Bluffs and ends at Baroness Beige's Belfry, a padded tower with the first Hubbub Bell at the top.

World 2, Fizzwood Grove, is a forest of giant soda-bottle trees with fizzing rivers. Rising soda bubbles carry you over the Bubbletop Canopy, currents push you through Root Beer Rapids, Tick-Tock blocks rearrange the Hollow Log Hoedown, fireflies and lanterns light Firefly Fairway at night, your own echo helps you through Whispering Grove Manor, and Count Quietude waits at the top of his Clocktower.

Each world also has a Muffler Fort with a mini-boss, a Paint Silo that makes coloured Stencil Blocks solid all over the planet, and secret exits that open new paths on the map: a Tangerine Silo behind a Mount Kick, a back door that only opens if you stay perfectly silent, a goal pad on top of a giant picnic basket and Comet Rail Stations that lead to the sky.

A platformer that feels right

Bippo Blast Planet runs a fixed 60-steps-per-second simulation, so every jump is exactly the same height on a 60 Hz laptop, a 120 Hz phone or a 144 Hz gaming monitor, and rendering is interpolated so faster screens are smoother. Walking, running and sprinting have their own top speeds and acceleration, skids and turnarounds read clearly, slopes speed you up downhill and slow you uphill, and corner correction nudges you around ceiling corners instead of bonking you.

Jump height responds to how long you hold the button, the apex of every jump hangs for a moment so you can line up a landing, air control is responsive without throwing momentum away, and death-to-retry takes under two and a half seconds. The physics were checked by automated tests against a written feel checklist, and every level was checked by a bot that plays it from every foothold to make sure every exit, Big Bolt and Echo Mark can be reached.

Power-ups, Gulpo and the Pocket

Small Bippo grows Big with a Spark Plug. Special forms each change how you play: Chili throws peppers that hop along the floor, ricochet off walls and light Lantern Plants, and Comet Tail glides and, with a full Boost Gauge, launches into a swooping flight controlled by pitching up and diving. Hyper Juice makes you invincible for ten seconds and every enemy you touch adds time. Those are the power-ups of Sprinkle Shores and Fizzwood Grove; the Frost, Boing, Flip and Triplet forms arrive with the later worlds.

Taking a hit in a special form drops you to Big, not Small, so long levels stay fun, and Classic rules are a switch away for purists. Extra items go into your Pocket, which travels with you across levels until you release it.

Co-op for up to four players

Party Up from the title screen and up to four friends play the same level on one screen: two on one keyboard and the rest on gamepads. You can stand on a friend's head, bounce off them for a free mid-air jump, pick them up and throw them across a gap, or carry them through a hard section. Fall into a pit and you float back to the group in a bubble; a teammate pops it and you are back in the game. The team only loses a life when everyone is in a bubble at once.

The camera frames the whole group and zooms out a little when you spread apart, Gift Crates hand out one power-up per player, and bosses get tougher with more players so nobody steamrolls them. The end of every level shows a podium with fun awards such as Most Stomps and Bubble Buddy. Each world hides co-op secrets marked with a Party Mark sign that only a team can reach.

Made for phones and big screens

The game is drawn with WebGL at your screen's full resolution, with a Canvas fallback, and the characters are live vector rigs, so squash-and-stretch animation stays crisp at any size. On a phone held upright the game sits above a dedicated control deck so your thumbs never cover the action; turn it sideways or tap Full screen for an edge-to-edge view with the buttons on either side. Gamepads plug in and work instantly, and the quality adjusts itself to keep the game smooth.

Your progress saves automatically on the map in three save files in your browser. Options include volume for music, effects and voices, a Relaxed mode with no timer and an extra hit, game speed, gentler screen shake and flashes, always-run, and a touch layout you can drag into place.

Bippo Blast Planet FAQ