I was browsing Facebook the other day when an old KingsIsle friend of mine (Erik McKinney) announced that the new company he was working for had just released a new VR game called Bounce Arcade. Erik was the environment artist for the game, so I jumped on the opportunity to purchase it and give it a spin.
Honestly, my loyalties to Erik aside, it's a pretty fun game, and I love the concept behind it. Basically, you as the player are the paddles sitting in the pinball machine hole, and you need to block the ball from going through. Just keep smacking that ball and don't let it get past you.
That's the basics, but like most pinball machines, there's more to the game loop than just that. Just like in regular pinball, certain targets and objectives are scattered throughout the field in front of you. They'll be highlighted in yellow to give you an indication that you need to target it. After hitting them, a secondary objective lights up, leading to a big event. In regular pinball, that's usually a multiball situation.
To simulate "tilting" the table, you can bend a ball in the direction of targets and even activate a power-up to suck a ball into your paddles and redirect it at a target. Unlike regular pinball, however, what tends to open up in Bounce Arcade is a minigame!
For example, in the Gunslinger game after, hitting the targets to charge up the town hall's meter, all the cannons will point toward the bell above the town hall and the doors to the town hall will open to reveal an icon. Hit all the cannons and the game will pause as you play whatever mini-game is associated with the icon on the town hall doors. In a couple of those instances, your paddles will turn into guns and you'll participate in a shoot out ala the game police trainer (shooting the bad guys, avoiding the town citizens) or hit the dynamite barrels before they touch the ground . . . stuff like that.
Once you win a mini-game, you'll earn a star for the level. What happens when you fill all the stars?!?! Man, I don't know yet!!! I'm getting close though. I managed to get 3 of 4 stars on the gunslinger level and set a pretty decent score though. I'm definitely getting better at the game with each play.
The only complaint I've heard from around the Discord channels is that there isn't enough content, which to be honest is really hard to reach when making a $20 game, from personal experience. On the other hand, I love the potential they've created for this game, and I hope it does well enough that it will become a lovable DLC beast similar to Walkabout Minigolf.
. . . And to me, that's what you need to look at for VR games at that price point. Walkabout is such a good model for games like this, in fact, if I were a Designer for Velan I'd push to mirror more of the good things in that game that make it feel like there's more bang for the buck. Let's take a look at that.
1- Each level of Walkabout Minigolf has an easy and a hard mode. Bounce should do this as well. One time while playing Bounce, my controllers bugged out and my paddles no longer extended out in front of me in space, instead they were stuck nearer to my hands. It made me jump around and stand up really exercising to hit the ball. Although it was a bug, it's a rather easy way to make a hard mode for the game.
2- Account rewards from hidden minigames make Walkabout pretty genius. In the easy mode, you collect balls that you can use while you play. I really think you could do the same thing with the pinball in Bounce. You play the game with an ordinary-looking ball that ignites with an effect once in a while. Just change the look of this ball as a reward for doing a hidden objective on the easy mode. For hard mode in Walkabout, you have a fox hunt minigame. When you complete the fox hunt, you earn a new golf club. Again, I'm using paddles that look the same in every level . . . what if I could earn special "gunslinger" paddles (perhaps the edge looks like a rope lasso?) by hitting a certain point threshold in a hard mode of the Gunslinger map. It'd be great!
I will say that if you are prone to seasickness or don't have your VR legs yet, this is a really good starter game. You can play it just by looking in one direction. It's basically a 180 game instead of 360.
I may highlight individual boards here on the blog in the future, but I've played enough of Bounce Arcade that it felt like I needed to give it a shout-out. It's a great game with a lot of potential. (Also, Erik is amazing and you should check out his cool environmental artwork)
Happy Dueling!
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