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.

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.

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.

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!