Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Bouncing Around.

Bounce is a game created by sivershadows

Introduction

Hey guys, this is Demonxz95 here with a review of Bounce. Not Bounce by alexhw, Bounce by Sivershadows. For EGD9, I reviewed her game, Hive. Let's just say that the review didn't go over very well. Is this game of her's better?

Review

To start off, one of the first things I noticed was rather bland scenery, which was just a silver background. I was not a fan of this. The prefabs used for the ground work though. But scenery is just one slice of the cake.

The actual gameplay revolves around a bunch of different colored spheres that magically have the ability to jump. They can only jump in a certain direction too. Think of it like Jumpie by Makever, but with different character entities for jumping certain directions and that's the concept of this game in a nutshell.

The level structure of the game is... alright. In addition to the multiple colored sphere, there are also colored gates in which only the appropriately colored spheres can go through and bars that release spheres from prison-like structure. Later on, a few more ideas are introduced but I'm not going to be spoiling them.

Back to the levels, the gameplay of the game is creative but sometimes a bit frustrating. You'll occasionally have to make rather precise jumps and plan your moves ahead because if a sphere goes off screen, you can kiss it goodbye since you click on a sphere and the screen centers to it.

There are also a few... oversights in this game. Some of the hazards don't kill you depending on the sphere you're controlling. I also would like to think level 7 is impossible since the light blue sphere can't pass its appropriately colored barrier, but there are names on the scoreboard so I can't conclude the level is impossible. The bar also kills you if you put it in the water for some reason. I think Siver didn't check the sensor layer. There's also this one section in level 4 that's frustrating since one of the red bars near the end has a really weird hitbox and it can kill you even if you truthfully aren't touching it.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing but the game also has a very weird difficulty transition. Other than the intro and the first level, I found levels 5 and 6 the easiest ones in the game.

I also think it's very weird that Siver... Spoiler Alert, duplicated level 3 and made it a later level.

Ratings

Pros and Cons

Pros

Creative

Additive

Good Gameplay

Cons

Bad scenery

A few flaws with hitboxes, placements and sensors.

Conclusion

Do I think this game is feature worthy? No. I don't really think my opinion matters at this point though. If Siver improved the scenery and fixed the layer and sensor problems, this game might be feature worthy. As it stands now, the game is close, but it just isn't there yet.

This certainly went on a lot better than my Hive review. Siver, you show potential with PPG's, so keep experimenting and I think you'll make more great games with them.