Making a Mobile Bounce Game with Unity 3D and Playmaker - Adding Particle Effects

Beginner Game Design tutorial series creating a simple Bounce type game using Playmaker within Unity 3D. In this video, I'll be adding particle effects to the background and also an effect for when the ball hits the paddle. Absolutely NOCODE. Also make a skateboard game playlist: https://bit.ly/34

This mobile bounce-game tutorial adds two layers of particle polish on top of earlier post-processing work: drifting twinkly particles in the background for depth, and a burst that fires off the paddle every time the ball strikes it. It is a practical lesson in tuning particle settings and triggering a one-shot burst through the existing detection FSM.

Add background particles

Create a particle system in the walls-and-background group, moved up so particles fall downward (set the shape to Edge and rotate it 180 degrees on Z). Widen the shape scale on X to span the scene and push it back so it does not hit the paddle. Enable Looping and Pre Warm so particles already fill the screen at start. Use random-between-two-constants for start delay and speed (around 2 to 5), start size (about 0.2 to 1), and two subtle purple start colors, and set lifetime to 10 so they stay on screen the whole way down.

Build the paddle burst

Add a particle system to the controller, positioned on top of the paddle and rotated negative 90 on X so it fires upward. Use two warm colors from yellow to orange, short lifetimes around 0.1 to 0.3, speeds of roughly 3 to 10, and small random sizes about 0.1 to 0.5. Set rate over time to 0 and add a single burst of about 30 with looping off, so it pops once rather than streaming.

Trigger and reset it on hit

Rename the sound manager to detection manager since it already detects the ball hitting the paddle. In the state that plays the paddle sound and screen shake, add Activate Game Object to switch the paddle particles on. Because the burst should fire fresh each hit, route the finished transition to a short Wait of 0.3 seconds, then a Reset Particles state that deactivates the system again before returning to listening. Now every paddle bounce plays a satisfying spark, and the background drift adds depth, giving the game noticeably more juice.