Whackerball Reviews

Good concept for a cheap game. The idea of using a weapon to move the ball and the ability to shrink the paddle make the gameplay deep enough for the short play time it offers. I had fun playing the last few days, now I'll move on to something else, but for the price it was worth it.

Breakout, but gun. Although the multitasking is hard at first, you get used to it relatively quickly; after a while of practice, you've got a neat little indie game that you can play whenever you're bored or want to pass some time.

For what it is—that being a concise arcade roguelike—I love this game immensely. It has a high skill ceiling and a superb depth to length ratio, rivaled only by Downwell (which to those familiar has certainly influenced this game visually and mechanically.) The art style is cute, clear, and clean enough that I don't mind the screen clutter at higher difficulty stages. I prefer to play without screen tilt or motion effects, though I appreciate the option

I may be biased here for playing so many Break Out based games but this one is certainly something else. Imagine taking the classic formula of the paddle and the ball but mixing in shooter mechanics that deflect the ball trajectory and hit the enemies with the bullets. As a result, you are tasked to coordinate ball movement with paddle movement along the various biomes with treacherous enemies that start off enemies but slowly turn your dodging playstyle almost to that of a bullet hell. At the very least you can mitigate that with shops, upgrades given in a roguelike fashion and different types of guns that lead to a lot of replayability since each run lasts at most half an hour (just look at my playtime for evidence). That's not even mentioning the various achievements to be obtained, some much harder than others since you need to be lucky or pretty skilled to get them (maybe even both). Furthermore, the presentation in itself is simple enough to not be distracting but not colorless to feel dull. Every enemy has its sprites, attack pattern and it matches the zone it's placed on. Plus, the music fits each zone perfectly with various instruments and a catchy tune for the most part that left me humming multiple times. In conclusion, for its low price, its continuous runs that you can fit in a coffee break, its overall feel for the gameplay and low system requirements, I can safely recommend it to any fan of arcade games or in general. Just make sure you don't try to recover the ball while it is off screen. They should have patched that softlocking bug by now but one is always paranoid once one loses many promising runs because of that.

Okay I have one thing to say, AMAZING! I am updating my review after they made changes and added some new functions and buttons. Now you can right click and the ball will shoot down automatically, and they added some more functions and nerfed some things, like making the ball slower, and made some maps easier. I can now play this game and get somewhere. They did an awesome job and I am now seeing parts of the game I had not seen until this update. I am very happy and they made FANTASTIC improvements and were clearly extremely creative with their work that they added in the new patch. If you gave this game a bad review, give it another shot because they went out of their way and made this game a lot of fun, and easier (It is still a challenging game of course). The dev clearly read the reviews and I am very satisfied with the game and the updates. Thank you so much for reading the reviews and improving the game. I love it! Thank you devs. I can easily recommend this now.

Highly recommended little indie game. It's really tough to play at first, but as you get the hang of it, you start pulling off some really sick maneuvers. I definitely feel the pull to play just one more time and notice myself getting measurably better every attempt. Power ups are fun and simple to understand. One of those little indie titles that has you thinking "why wasn't this done years ago?"

Edit: They fixed it The game is now very inspirational. Old review: Just like your other game, some more ability to change my controls and access to information would be nice. IE, using right click to shrink the board instead of shift so my left hand can just focus on moving left and right, and my right hand can focus on attack/defend. Being able to change the controls for a game is pretty standard in my opinion, so it would be very nice. Made it decently far I think for a couple of runs, the gameplay loop is fine it just needs some tuning. Game is incredibly difficult.

Awesome concept executed to perfection. I've never played a game like this; It looks simple but it's one of those games that takes 1000% of your concentration to play properly. The skill ceiling in a game like this feels incredibly high. The mechanics all flow together so elegantly and everything is so juicy. The game also has a ton of unlocks and each run has a lot of variety, I can see myself sinking many more hours into this. The music is also excellent, all-around great game especially for the money!

Very fun, short and sweet experimental game that combines: - Breakout mechanics of moving a paddle to keep a ball in the air, which can damage enemies. - Twin stick elements of aiming and shooting enemies from your ball, all while dodging bullets as the paddle. (You can control the ball movement with the recoil of your shots, and only reload when touching the paddle) - Rogue-like elements with different types of upgrades, shops, unlockable ball weapons, and extra modifiers. Also with runs taking less than 25 minutes with a boss at the end. I definitely recommend this to anyone that is even remotely interested, it is decently cheap too!

Quick Score: 5/5 Notes: Extremely fun game. Really wish there was either a slightly more difficult mode or a TLB or something similar. Some of the reviews complain about the difficulty, but once you get used to the game and figure out what a couple of the extremely powerful upgrades are the game isn't very difficult. Advice: Use the starting trait that heals you after every stage. Use the SMG or Pistol. Priority upgrades are Turret, the balloon that makes the ball fall less fast, and slingshot. Slingshot sounds bad, but its actually extremely powerful. None of the other upgrades matter a ton but they all help a little, you should always choose the above 3 over anything else though. Although turret and slingshot probably aren't great for shotgun or bow, that's probably why i just wouldn't recommend either of those weapons. Wouldn't bother with ammo upgrades really, just save for +max health or regular health if you are extremely low. I died I think my first 3 runs just learning the game, but after figuring the game out and following this strat i first tried the hard mode, no shop, and no upgrade runs back to back in that order. Though I did finish all of these runs with extremely low health so I may have fluked them slightly.