I always say that video games are comparable to films, differences aside, because they tell stories, have an argument, different scenes, a soundtrack, and special effects. Yes, you read correctly, you can add special effects, or particle systems as they're commonly known in computer games, to your games.

In computer graphics, this technique is commonly used because it simulates several natural and meteorological phenomena such as snow, sun, rain, fire, meteors, and smoke. It also simulates other special effects such as spirals, explosions, fireworks, and other lighting effects by using a large amount of small images. If you think about natural phenomena, like rain for example, it is composed of hundreds of water droplets and so that's what we need to replicate if we want to simulate a particle system in Cocos2d.

You might be thinking that this task must be hard and offers little possibilities, but in this section, you will learn to create and customize your own particle effects...