Backyard Bounce (iOS)

Get ball to hoop. Ball is bouncy and subject to gravity. Ball must be mollycoddled towards hoop via carefully constructed obstacle courses of clutter. Sometimes different types of balls are used all at the same time! Backyard Bounce, the latest physics based puzzle game from Clickgamer.com is certainly nothing new.

Three different environments, each with twenty-four puzzles, are offered up and attractively presented. Each level has a variety of apparatus to use along with bonus marks for collecting the whistles located in fiddly-to-reach places. Points are then given for completing a level, the amount of clutter you have left unused and how many fiddly whistles you managed to bounce on. True to tradition, your points then convert to stars which in greater number allow you to open up later environments .. no junk yard for those who can’t even manage a back yard … unless you pay of course.

Puzzle difficulty ranges from “my dog could do that” all the way up to “insanely precise positioning of several springs required”. Solutions via the hints system are available but only cover the most basic answer. There are multiple ways to complete each level and this helps to increase the repeatability of quite a short game. To be honest though, I ran out of the desire to be creative about five levels in and just settled for “making do” .. this worked until I needed more gold stars to advance. Begrudgingly I returned to previous puzzles to have another bash.

Therein lies my issue with this game; it didn’t make me want to play it. It’s a perfectly nice release that you could take home to your Mum and it wouldn’t embarrass you with crudely-designed levels or piss-poor graphics. It’s just all very much the same with the soundtrack repeating, the graphics repeating and nothing to make you want to keep at it unless you’re a completionist that wants to get their pennies worth from this app.

It would work well as something you return to for ten minutes whilst waiting for public transport but it’s not addictive or amusing enough to warrant extended ignoring of your loved ones.

Backyard Bounce is available now on iPhone, iPod and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0+