Create Flappy Bird clone in Unity Bolt visual language in 10 minutes or less

Ing. Jan Jileček
ITNEXT
Published in
9 min readMar 23, 2021

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If you want to become a game developer, but were always afraid of learning a programming language, Bolt visual scripting language might be the right starting point for your gamedev journey!

Two main game engines in the industry, Unreal Engine 4 and Unity now both have the option to use a visual scripting language, instead of the classic programming languages. In the case of UE4 it’s has always been the blueprint system (used primarily instead of C++) and in the case of Unity it’s Bolt.

In this tutorial we will make a clone of the popular game Flappy Bird and we will replicate the original controls and obstacle generator. The obstacles will be infinitely generated off-screen and move to the left (common trick to create the illusion of movement of the main character that the infinite-scroller games use). Let’s do it!

The final game + the player controller Bolt graph

Installing Bolt

First we create a new 2D project in Unity 2020 and we install Bolt (link). If you are not sure how to create a new project or install a new package, check the first part of my game development series.

Select 2D as the type of the new project. After importing Bolt from the Asset Store, download it in Unity via the Package Manager → My Assets → Download.

And then install it via Tool → Install Bolt. Follow the setup wizard (Next → programmer naming → next → generate).

Player character

We will use an alien as the main player character. You can choose whatever sprite you like, I found the alien on Kenney’s game assets page.

But first we need to create a new game object for it. Click in the hierarchy window and select 2D Object Sprite.

Rename the new object to Alien.

In the Sprite Renderer component change the Sprite to shipGreen_manned (you can also download the…

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Writer for

INTP, UE5 dev, Master’s degree in comp-sci, Creator, indie game developer, director, writer, photographer. I like BJJ, Jungian psychology, mythology and memes.