I generally don’t travel much, so it was a pretty big deal for me when I finally got to visit Maui a few years ago. And you know what? It was incredible. Snorkeling, chicken katsu, sea turtles… it really doesn’t get much better than that. One of my favorite memories of those few short weeks on the island, though, was playing a dumb mobile game with my girlfriend every time we went back to the hotel. It was Cubed Rally Redline (Free), and we were fiercely competitive with it. Ever since that vacation, every time I hear that Jared Bailey has a new game coming out it stirs up happy, sunny memories deep in my brain.
Lately, though, his games seem to have gotten smaller and smaller. I spent hours playing the crap out of Redline, and the more recent No Can Win releases usually only hold my attention for fifteen minutes or so. I suppose that’s just the nature of the App Store post-Flappy Bird, but it still kind of sucks. Because of all this, I went into his latest game, Super Bounce Back (Free), thinking it’d be as light and disposable as, say, Shredmill (Free) or Wrong Way Racing (Free). And while it’s definitely no Cubed Rally Racing (Free) or Redline, it’s actually a surprisingly clever little game.
In Super Bounce Back you play as a little black ninja ball who feels compelled to constantly hop forward. It’s a lot like the hero of the Bean’s Quest ($2.99) games, except here you have no control over which direction you go. You go straight, and you’re going to like it. The only control you really have is when you land, and that’s by simply touching the screen to stomp. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this particular mechanic, but the thing that sets it apart is the “Bounce Back" part of the title.
See, when you first jump into a level all you have to do is hop on platforms from left to right while avoiding the gaps in between. It’s pretty easy to make it to the “end", and that’s where the clever part comes in. There, you’ll hit a wall and start bouncing back to the start of the level, going over all the platforms you already hit. Making things way more challenging after you reverse is that some platforms break and fall away when you touch them the first time over, so you’ll have to carefully (and quickly) choose new spots to hit when you double back. On top of that, there are other platforms that fill up with spikes everywhere but the spot you touched the first time (determined by whether or not you stomped), so you’ll have to be even more precise there.
As if all of that wasn’t challenging enough, if you really want to get a high score (and move on to the next level) you’ll usually have to hit the exact same spots you hit the first time (marked by a star), regardless of how many other safe, spike-free places there are to land. (And I realize I’ve just spent about two and a half paragraphs describing the rules of the game, but don’t worry–everything is pretty simple and obvious once you dive in.) It all works really well, and I love that the game challenges you to plan ahead with your stomps and bounces the first time through so you don’t potentially screw yourself when you have to come back.
While the core mechanics are solid, clever, and fun, I do have a few minor gripes. First is that the vaguely South Park-y art style looks kind of generic. Honestly, if I didn’t know it was a No Can Win game I probably wouldn’t have downloaded it in the first place just based on the way it looks. I mean, it’s not bad, it just doesn’t really stand out. (It’s especially disappointing since I love the way the Cubed and Baby Lava Bounce (Free) games look.) Making it worse is that some of the text and buttons in the game look non-retina on my iPad Air, which is pretty noticeable when the rest of the game is relatively crisp. Also, the game has ads, and while they aren’t particularly obtrusive or annoying, it’s disappointing that there’s no way to get rid of them.
Will Jared Bailey’s latest game bounce to the top of my all-time favorites list the way Cubed Rally Redline did years ago? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time, as it’s actually a really clever take on the “constantly hopping platformer" genre (if something that specific could even be called a genre). It’s a good thing that the game’s core mechanics are so fun and relatively unique, too, because the rest of the package just isn’t. That’s probably okay, though, because the gameplay is really what matters most in neat little time-wasters like Super Bounce Back.
