Bounce Arcade Review – Welcome to the Machine

Bounce Arcade Review

I’m of the age where there were still legit pinball arcades trying to extract my youthful fistful of quarters. Since then, most of my bumper-flipping and table-tilting has been done in the back rooms of pizza parlors. Although I’m a video gamer through and through, the tactile experience of a pinball machine is a special kind of fun. But what if, instead of hovering over a table, you could play from inside? Well, there’s an answer of sorts in Bounce Arcade. 

Pinball Wizard

Bounce Arcade imagines pinball in VR, but playing from inside the table. It’s a fantastic concept. You shoot the ball, then act as a mobile bumper of sorts, redirecting the ball back into the table. Unlike a fixed location bumper, you can move around to magnetically catch the ball and shoot it towards a high-value target. While I guess there might be a way to make the concept work as a traditional video game, it seems tailor made for VR. You keep going until you run out of balls. This can take a very long time if you’re skilled and coordinated. We’re talking 20 or 30 minutes, with scores in the millions.

Play is pretty simple. There’s a compact tutorial that shows you the ropes. Your hands are paddles that can hit the ball or magnetically catch it and throw it back. There are some minor variations of these, and some aiming aids, but you get the idea. The tutorial foreshadows that there will be minigames to come, and there are.

Feeling All the Bumpers

Post-tutorial there are a selection of four, themed tables: a pirate ship, a space station, a haunted mansion and a western town. They’re all colorful, noisy and visually interesting and reminded me of being inside carnival fun houses. There are lots of places to aim and redirect the ball, and every now and then there will be a timed minigame sequence of targets to hit for extra points. The game’s excellent lighting and flashing effects definitely help sell the concept. Sound design is very good when it comes to the table noises, but the game undersells its music. 

Outside of the basics — simple controls and the four tables — there aren’t a lot of other mechanics or complications. There’s no progression system that unlocks new tables or higher-skill moves, or extras like additional balls per run. There’s a leaderboard, if that motivates you. The basic tables are very well made, but this is a game that cries out for a steady stream of DLC, licensed tables or some sort of additional gameplay incentives aside from leaderboard bragging rights.

The Digit Counters Fall

Real world pinball tables rely heavily on physics — and luck — and serious players are very much into the way tables are tuned and adjusted. In Bounce Arcade, the main concern is ball physics and whether their speed and path can be predicted. Generally, these are pretty good, though sometimes the ball moves much slower than you’d expect. For me, the learning curve was focused on trying to reach balls that we’re too far over my head, and remembering I wasn’t a stationary bumper. I had to move. 

VR is obviously at its best when it creates an experience that is unique to the medium. By this definition, Bounce Arcade is a definite success. It has an original concept that’s well executed and lots of fun. Often in VR, novelty is a game’s only selling point. I don’t think that’s true with Bounce Arcade, and hopefully the game will continue to be supported by new tables and additional modes or incentives to keep playing.

***Game code provided by the publisher for review. Reviewed on Meta Quest 3***