There have been plenty of games in recent years that have tried to add a new twist on classic arcade mechanics. Some of them have been more successful, while others have fallen a little flat. Re:bounder fits somewhere in between those two ends of the spectrum.
The game is a take on the likes of Breakout – there are blocks, there are balls and you have to smash the latter into the former in order to score points. Instead of having a bat, though, there’s a glowing line near the bottom of the screen.
When a ball gets close to that line, you need to tap the screen to send it bouncing back upwards. You’ve got no control over the angle or the speed it flies off at, you just need to keep it from disappearing. There’s a twist, though.
If you tap when a ball is too far away from the line, it’ll turn red, and you won’t be able to bounce anything back for a split second. Get your timing wrong and there’s a decent chance that all of your balls are going to pass the line and you’re going to lose.
There are power-up blocks that give you new and different kinds of ball, and every time you hit a ball back into play it’ll get more powerful. Get a perfect hit – when the ball is directly on the line – and it’ll earn even more XP. Let any blocks get below the line and it’s game over as well.
Things can get pretty frantic, and pretty frustrating. Because the balls bounce off at random, quite often they’ll miss the most obvious danger, smashing blocks at the top of the screen while one lower down inches closer to the line.
Re:bounder is a decent way of spending a few minutes, a snacky bite of gaming that isn’t going to fill you up, but isn’t going to annoy you too much. It’s worth checking out, but don’t expect it to stick around on your homescreen for too long.