I have to give credit to Velan Studios – it likes to keep things interesting. After the criminally short-lived competitive dodgeball game Knockout City and two of the best augmented reality games out there, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit and Hot Wheels: Rift Rally, the studio's next game is another unexpected and fascinating pivot. Bounce Arcade is a VR game that combines elements of pinball, brick breaker, and table tennis to create a completely unique arcade experience that's as easy to pick up as it is hard to put down… or take off? We're still figuring out VR slang.
As a newly converted pinball guy who is one of virtual reality's bravest soldiers, Bounce Arcade hits the perfect intersection of many of my specific interests, but I think the appeal is pretty universal. Watch the ball come, the ball hit, the ball bounce around. There are fun sounds, lots of lights, and even if you don't know what you're doing you can still rack up millions of points on the scoreboard. It's the heartbeat of pinball and the reason the game has lasted nearly 100 years, and Bounce Arcade captures the energy and excitement of watching balls slap and zoom around smashing into stuff.
Bounce Arcade Pinball FX isn't just virtual pinball – it's pinball-inspired. The playfield on each map is a large, three-dimensional space where the ball can fly around freely, and with each hand you control a paddle you can use to bounce the ball and keep working on different objectives. The full game has four levels, but for the preview I was allowed to play the first two: Gunpowder Gulch and Asteroid Outpost.
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Both maps are a lot of fun and offer some different types of experiences. Gunpowder Gulch is an old west-themed level where your goal is to rob a bank and commit various other old west-y crimes. Progression is like regular pinball: you complete objectives by using your paddles to hit the ball into marked targets, thereby changing the field in some mechanical way that opens up new challenges.
One of the things that makes Bounce Arcade different from regular pinball is how much impact you have on the ball. Each time you hit the ball you can use your paddle to influence the direction it travels, just like you can move a floating bobber by hitting your fishing pole. This is Bounce Arcade's version of tilting the table, and once you learn how to use this technique it makes completing objectives much easier. You also have the ability to attract the ball to your paddles, which is useful when it starts to go too fast and out of control. You can think of it as Trapping's version of Bounce Arcade.
Both Gunpowder Gulch and Asteroid Outpost — a sci-fi map where you're tasked with maintaining a space station — have a lot of cool features that could only work in VR. Gunpowder Gulch has a bunch of mini-games where your paddles are replaced by six-shooters and you rack up points by shooting cardboard cutouts of the town sheriff. One version is an old-fashioned skirmish where you have to shoot targets as they rotate – instead being careful not to shoot civilians by mistake – while another version turns the entire map into a classic shooting gallery. The gameplay variety keeps things fresh and interesting, and it's great to see how the playing field transforms as you progress through the objectives.
Asteroid Outpost has a more linear progression path. You start by electrifying the ball by hitting charged objects, then using the ball to power up generators. Accomplishing each objective changes some aspect of the space station until the background is broken and the vastness of outer space becomes part of the playing field. At that point you'll use the force to break up the asteroids and collect the rare, ball-shaped materials that come out of them. The core gameplay mechanic has always been some version of hitting a ball with your paddles, but it's nice to see all the different ways the action can be complicated and re-contextualized in a level.
Velan Studios is definitely on to something with Bounce Arcade. Unfortunately, like most VR games, it's not much to look at. The maps are very simple and visually interesting, and the lighting is flat. I can usually get past the visuals in VR if the gameplay is engaging enough, but when you're staring at the same drab background through an entire play session, it's hard to ignore that everything looks bad. Pinball is all about overloading your senses with lights, colors and sounds, and I don't think Bounce Arcade can quite capture the feeling of activating a multi-ball and turning the table into a laser light show.
Bounce Arcade is coming to Quest headsets on November 21 with four different tables, so I'm curious to see if the two I haven't seen are visually interesting. Its interpretation of pinball is clever and I'm having a lot of fun with it so far, but I'm not sure it's the kind of experience I'd want to go back to, but it's the way I'll go back to mine. Favorite pinball table. On the other hand, if Velan manages to secure a license for an 80s hair metal band, I'll be all in.
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