📱 Mobile2009Lima SkyEASYDoodle Jump rebuild deck
EASY
Nothing fights you except one swept collision test, and the clone comes out no worse than the original, which is a fairer fight than anything else on this list.
You will get essentially the whole thing.
Smallest complete game on this list, and the clone is not meaningfully worse than the thing it copies. This is a fair fight. The swept collision is the only real trap and it is one extra comparison. Everything else is taste, because the gap distribution IS the difficulty curve and there is nothing else to tune. Budget most of your time on tilt permissions, since iOS Safari's device-orientation gate is more irritating than the entire rest of the build. Two brothers shipped the original in 2009.
- Difficulty
- EASY · 1 of 5
- First playable
- An evening
- The original
- 1 team-years
- Released
- 2009 · Mobile
- Genre
- Vertical Platformer
Build a vertical infinite jumper as a single self-contained HTML file. Canvas 2D, Web Audio, portrait, no dependencies. It should land under 400 lines. Requirements: - The character bounces automatically. Landing SETS vertical velocity to a fixed -13 rather than adding to it, so bounce height is identical no matter how far you fell. Gravity 0.45 per frame at 60fps, driven by a fixed timestep accumulator so it behaves identically on a 120Hz screen. - Platform collision is the one thing worth care. Test only while moving downward, only against the platform's top edge, and use a swept check between last frame's foot position and this frame's. A plain position test lets a fast fall pass clean through a platform roughly once every ten runs, which is worse than failing always. - Steering by device orientation where permission is granted, touch-drag as the fallback, with horizontal wrapping at both screen edges. - The camera only ever moves up. When the character rises above 40% screen height, scroll the world down and recycle platforms that leave the bottom. - Platform types in JSON: static, horizontally moving, one-shot crumbling, and a spring giving a -22 bounce. - Difficulty comes from the vertical gap distribution widening with height. There are no other knobs, so do not invent any. - Score is maximum height reached. Best score in localStorage. Definition of done: falling from the top of the screen at terminal speed still lands on a platform, and tilting a real phone steers.
- The hand-drawn graph-paper look, which is an illustrator's actual work and not a filter
- Springs, jetpacks, propeller hats, UFOs and the black hole, which are the whole content pipeline
- The name, which Lima Sky trademarked and has defended with some enthusiasm
Wrap the collision space, not just position
Everybody wraps the x coordinate and stops there, and then objects vanish at the seam, hitboxes fail precisely at the edge, and the camera jumps. Wrapping the space rather than the position — shortest-difference distance everywhere, ghost copies for collision and drawing — is the version that survives contact with a platform sitting on the boundary.
ScopeA weekend— build just this, not the game
Build a wraparound-space toy. Single self-contained HTML file, Canvas 2D, no dependencies, no build step. - A field that wraps horizontally, with a toggle for wrapping vertically as well. - The rule: no code subtracts two positions directly. Every distance goes through a shortest-wrapped-difference helper, and every object with a size is drawn and collision-tested as up to nine ghost copies offset by plus and minus the field dimensions. - Include the things that break at a seam: a character standing on a platform straddling it, a platform moving across it, projectiles, a camera following the character without jumping as it crosses, and a nearest-other-object query. - Draw the seam as a visible line, and flash any collision pair that was resolved through a ghost rather than the original. - A toggle for the naive version: wrap the x coordinate only, raw subtraction for distance. Definition of done: I walk across a platform straddling the seam without falling and the camera does not jump, and flipping to naive drops me through that same platform every time.
Not a clone — Doodle Jump re-themed and cut down to something you can finish. The angle is the important reel: it is what turns a project into a weekend. 24,360 ways to land.
Static Turn Order
Doodle Jump, but turn-based instead of real-time, set in a cyberpunk sprawl. Rendered in neon synthwave.
Build a browser game called "Static Turn Order". The pitch in one line: a vertical platformer in the spirit of Doodle Jump, but turn-based instead of real-time, set in a cyberpunk sprawl. WHAT THIS IS Take the SHAPE of Doodle Jump — its core loop, and whatever makes that loop good — and rebuild it as your own game in a different world at a smaller scope. Use your own names, art and audio, which you want anyway: a reskin of somebody else's game is less interesting than a new one that works the same way. THE ANGLE — this is the important constraint, honour it above everything else Turn-based instead of real-time. Time only advances when the player acts. Removes every timing, netcode and animation-blending problem and turns reflexes into decisions. This is what makes the project finishable. If a decision would push the scope back towards the original's, take the smaller option every time. THE THEME A cyberpunk sprawl. Permanent night and rain, neon as the only light source, and wet reflective surfaces doing most of the visual work. The theme is not a coat of paint. Let it change what the mechanics mean — a reload, a health pack and a locked door should all be things that make sense in this world and nowhere else. LOOK Neon synthwave. Magenta-cyan split lighting, grid horizons, sun stripes, and chrome reflections on every hard surface. REQUIREMENTS - Runs in a browser with no build step. Canvas 2D unless the angle genuinely requires 3D, in which case three.js. - Fixed-timestep update loop with interpolated rendering, so it behaves the same at 60Hz and 144Hz. - Every tuning constant in one CONFIG object at the top, exposed as live sliders in a debug panel. You will find the feel by dragging those, not by prompting. - All content — levels, entities, balance numbers — in JSON or plain data files, never inline in the logic. - Audio generated with the Web Audio API rather than asset files. - Respect prefers-reduced-motion: keep the fades, drop the shake and the parallax. BUILD ORDER 1. The core loop with placeholder rectangles, at the reduced scope the angle demands. No theme, no art, no audio. Make it fun as rectangles first. 2. The angle's consequences. Cutting to bots, or to turn-based, or to one level changes the design rather than just shrinking it — find out how and rewrite step 1. 3. The theme, as content and data. 4. The look, applied last as a rendering layer over a game that already works. Start by writing a one-page plan: the core loop, what the angle removes and what that frees you to do properly, and what you are deliberately leaving out. Wait for me to approve it before writing code.
Half the time one of these already does what you wanted, and the other half it saves you a week of solving a problem someone documented in 1997.
One count per game. No account — it is tied to a salted hash of your IP, which is not stored in a form anyone can reverse. Every build adds 1 team-years to the counter on the homepage.
Then try these
Questions
How hard is Doodle Jump to rebuild with an AI agent?
Yes — every game is buildable at some scope. The question is how hard, and Doodle Jump is EASY (1 of 5). You will get essentially the whole thing. Nothing fights you except one swept collision test, and the clone comes out no worse than the original, which is a fairer fight than anything else on this list. Reckon on an evening to something you can actually play — not to something that matches the 1 team-years Lima Sky spent.
What makes Doodle Jump hard to rebuild?
Nothing fights you except one swept collision test, and the clone comes out no worse than the original, which is a fairer fight than anything else on this list. That is why it sits at EASY rather than a tier either side of it. If you want the idea without the project, the transferable part is wrap the collision space, not just position — a weekend of work.
How long does it take to build a Doodle Jump clone?
Wrong question, and it is worth saying why. Nobody rebuilds Doodle Jump — the original took Lima Sky on the order of 1 team-years, released in 2009 on Mobile. What you can do is reach something playable and genuinely yours in about an evening, and then keep going for as long as it stays interesting. Any figure that claims otherwise is measuring a prototype and calling it a game.
What do I lose by building my own Doodle Jump?
The hand-drawn graph-paper look, which is an illustrator's actual work and not a filter. Springs, jetpacks, propeller hats, UFOs and the black hole, which are the whole content pipeline. The name, which Lima Sky trademarked and has defended with some enthusiasm. Those are the parts a prompt will not hand you.
Which AI coding agent should I use to build it?
Any of Claude Code, Codex or Cursor will handle this prompt. Paste it as your first message, let the agent scaffold the project, then iterate on feel — the second, third and tenth prompts are where a game actually gets good. Work in an empty folder or a fresh git branch so you can throw it away cheaply.
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