Eggy's Games

Lets do a review on my old game - Bounce Madness

A lot of these reviews look back on older games with regret and mistakes. However with this one, I actually really enjoyed the concept still even though some others didn't. Every now and then you are going to disagree with the feedback you get from players. This is one of those times, it's kinda like your child you thinks perfect, even though he is hideous.

The Unique Idea Spin On Pong

So I have a rule in game development and that is if you are going to make a game that is based on an older game, you have to change it enough that it becomes unique. This one I took the basic Pong premise and I turned it into an action game. You were able to switch from top to bottom to keep the ball in the screen. So you are vsing yourself almost.

The big twist comes from the fact there are arrows that push your ball around as you keep struggling to keep it in, you can also shoot. This means you can push those arrows away with your bullets and you can shoot down the missiles as well. While this chaos is unfolding lots of powerups come along and all sorts of strange enemies.

Perhaps Lacks Replayability

Since I have to attack my love child. I will say it's down size is that the gameplay doesn't really vary after a good 10mins so if you don't like the core survival game you might start to get bored since their is no progression.

It makes a great mini game, but expanding on it becomes difficult. One thing I did add was multiple mini games though with the paddle like juggling multiple balls, knocking them into baskets etc

I suppose I would really need to add some sort of upgrade system and keep changing the levels up, perhaps even a moving background might have taken it up a level to a viral hit. Sometimes it's hard to see if a game could be taken up to a viral hit or if the game is capped out due to the limitations of my idea.

Summary

The graphics might seem familiar to you. I end up using the same colour scheme for Bouncy Egg in Unity. I took it up a notch by adding dynamic shadows which really gives a game that immersive factor. This game was of course made in Flash so was limited by the tech at the time.

I think overall I still love this game even if it isn't a big hit. It laid the foundation for many games to use it to improve on and a good colour graphics scheme. Once again I enjoyed the simplicity and colour of the Main Menu.

It got a nice sponsorship by Kongregate at the time. So that was nice.

Overall the game may be simple, but it still holds a special place in my heart with that month of development. Perhaps you will see what I mean when you give Bounce Madness a go.

Boing!