Whizz Ball

Summary: A solid hybrid of Pong, Pinball and Brick Breaker with fun twists and turns. Single-player against CPU or up to 4 local friends. Easy to customize for the perfect feel for you group. 🟢 Easy-to-understand controls 🟢 Play single-player against CPU (easy, normal, or hard) or up to 4 player local PvP (can sub missing players for CPU) 🟢 Quick to customize for both entirely new players and the frantic fast-action lovers alike 🟢 Works well as a relatively quick party game (about 10 mins per average round on Normal speed) 🟢 Clean, retro-feel fun 🟢 Replays the winning action for that final, fun cheer 🟢 Excellent controller support during gameplay 🟢 Plays on Steam Link 🔴 Controller is a little finicky in the menu. Recommend navigating menu with Mouse + Keyboard, including customization options. 🔴 Requires CPU if less than 4 players. Ideally, I'd like to see a way to leave out the CPU for smaller groups, even have a little control perhaps over where the player sections are located. 🔴 A small, even petty gripe. But I'd have loved to see Co-OP against CPU(s), or Team-based options.

At time of review (Aug 2020) this is currently early access. I'm really enjoying the concept and the style but at the moment there is a significant playability issue. Each player simply has too little to control. You can only move your bat in a very short range above your blocks (essentially three positions). Sometimes you can redirect the ball in flight (the rules on this are a little unclear) and sometimes you can shoot. Most of the time is spent watching the ball bounce around and waiting often for quite a long time before it hits you. To put it into perspective I played a 4 player round with my two daughters and no-one in slot 4. The game took a long time to finish and slot 4 came very close to winning. The outcome was very nearly random. I think if each players bat was given freedom of motion about the whole quadrant of the play area and/or some ability to tilt, it would improve the pace of the game and the level of interactively dramatically. This game definitely has promise if that defect is fixed.

You're looking at games to play with the boys. You stumble upon this game with three (3) reviews. It's a banger. Get it.

A friend recommended Whizz Ball to me as a good party game, and we have had a lot of fun playing with 4 players. Using the after touch feature to redirect the ball towards other players creates a great sense of competitive fun. Single player is still a challenge, but playing against friends is really what it's about, even if it's you and one other. Good selection of powerups, although they might need a bit more balancing, but these can be turned off in the options. Also came across a couple of minor issues but nothing game breaking, which is fine by me. Overall, fun little game to play with friends!