Building a Simple Ball Bounce Game in Pygame

This beginner Pygame tutorial teaches how to animate a bouncing ball using motion logic, screen boundaries, and collision response.

Project Overview

The ball bounce game is a classic beginner project for learning motion physics and event-based logic in Pygame. You’ll create a ball that moves across the screen and bounces off the window edges.

Setting Up the Game Window

Start by importing Pygame and initializing the game window:

import pygame
pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((600, 400))
pygame.display.set_caption("Ball Bounce")
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

Creating the Ball

Set initial position, size, and movement direction:

ball_pos = [300, 200]
ball_radius = 20
ball_speed = [3, 3]

Main Game Loop with Bounce Logic

This loop handles movement, screen updates, and bouncing at window edges:

running = True
while running:
    screen.fill((0, 0, 0))
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False

    # Move the ball
    ball_pos[0] += ball_speed[0]
    ball_pos[1] += ball_speed[1]

    # Bounce off walls
    if ball_pos[0] < ball_radius or ball_pos[0] > 600 - ball_radius:
        ball_speed[0] = -ball_speed[0]
    if ball_pos[1] < ball_radius or ball_pos[1] > 400 - ball_radius:
        ball_speed[1] = -ball_speed[1]

    pygame.draw.circle(screen, (255, 0, 0), ball_pos, ball_radius)
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()

What You Learned

• How to draw and animate shapes in Pygame
• How to detect and respond to collisions with screen boundaries
• How to structure a basic game loop using `pygame.time.Clock()`

Next Steps

Try adding sound effects when the ball bounces, or add a paddle and transform this into a basic Pong clone. You can also change the ball’s speed or color randomly after every bounce!

Also read: Your First Game in Pygame: Step-by-Step Tutorial