One I got into a groove with this game, I had a good time with it. The crank controls work well, the music and general atmosphere is super chill.
It was hard at first, and there are some annoyances like the way the ball will sometimes bounce around just out of reach and seems to just completely pass through your bat thing. It's also very difficult to be accurate and consistent with the crank, but most of the game was not so fast paced that this became a problem.
I was about ready to say I really liked this game and that I felt it succeeded in what it wanted to be. However, the last handful of levels are such a brutal step up in difficulty - and in a very frustrating way - that I ended up soured on the experience a lot.
I guess I didn't notice till the end, or maybe this mechanic is only shows up in later levels, but as your ball bounces around, it gets slower (thus more manageable). So your ball is at its fastest right at the start of a level, or after you die.
This really became an issue for me toward the end, as the levels start out blisteringly fast and gradually slow down to a manageable pace if you can tough it out. The minor control issues and unforgiving mechanics become extremely obvious at high speed, trying to manoeuvre the crank that quickly and precisely just doesn't work well for me.
However, you also get these items randomly appear that make the ball stick to your paddle next time you touch it, so you can aim your next shot. Only that next shot is once again at super high speed, and totally undoes all the work you had to do to survive this far. These items seemed to appear at random, and sometimes would be absent for an entire attempt but other times appear in rapid succession - they are near impossible to avoid and basically wipe out your attempt.
So a lot of the attempts would go like, you start out the level super fast, survive long enough to slow the ball down and start chipping away at the blocks, sometimes for several minutes, then one of these items appears and resets the speed super fast, you lose a ball, respawn, but it's super fast again, so you lose the rest in rapid succession. So infuriating!
Anyway, I did get through the game in the end - but I ended it feeling a lot less positive than I thought I would due to this experience.
It was hard at first, and there are some annoyances like the way the ball will sometimes bounce around just out of reach and seems to just completely pass through your bat thing. It's also very difficult to be accurate and consistent with the crank, but most of the game was not so fast paced that this became a problem.
I was about ready to say I really liked this game and that I felt it succeeded in what it wanted to be. However, the last handful of levels are such a brutal step up in difficulty - and in a very frustrating way - that I ended up soured on the experience a lot.
I guess I didn't notice till the end, or maybe this mechanic is only shows up in later levels, but as your ball bounces around, it gets slower (thus more manageable). So your ball is at its fastest right at the start of a level, or after you die.
This really became an issue for me toward the end, as the levels start out blisteringly fast and gradually slow down to a manageable pace if you can tough it out. The minor control issues and unforgiving mechanics become extremely obvious at high speed, trying to manoeuvre the crank that quickly and precisely just doesn't work well for me.
However, you also get these items randomly appear that make the ball stick to your paddle next time you touch it, so you can aim your next shot. Only that next shot is once again at super high speed, and totally undoes all the work you had to do to survive this far. These items seemed to appear at random, and sometimes would be absent for an entire attempt but other times appear in rapid succession - they are near impossible to avoid and basically wipe out your attempt.
So a lot of the attempts would go like, you start out the level super fast, survive long enough to slow the ball down and start chipping away at the blocks, sometimes for several minutes, then one of these items appears and resets the speed super fast, you lose a ball, respawn, but it's super fast again, so you lose the rest in rapid succession. So infuriating!
Anyway, I did get through the game in the end - but I ended it feeling a lot less positive than I thought I would due to this experience.