Bounce House

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Bounce House is an Arcade-style game released on Nintendo Switch in 2023. In this game, players are bouncing around on various inflatable arenas, trying to slam down to eject out AI-controlled characters nearby them.

The game doesn’t have a menu screen, and loads right into the gameplay, and one of the first things players will likely notice is how this game’s framerates absolutely chug, especially when players are moving in one of the game’s ball pits. It’s not like the 3D visuals on display here are particularly impressive in any way – they’re cartoony and colorful, and don’t look terrible, but they definitely don’t seem like anything that should be slowing the framerates to a crawl like this, save for the number of objects on-screen. All of this is backed by banjo music that I suppose works for the lighthearted nature of the game, but doesn’t do much more than that.

The gameplay here doesn’t really make up for the visual issues. It’s largely brainless – move to the next character, use your slam attack near them, repeat. Sometimes these characters apparently respawn, sometimes they don’t, and I don’t see any indication why this would be. In any case, try to take out as many enemies as you can before the timer elapses. And these enemies don’t fight back or even respond to you.

Because this game has no menus, it also has no options. No levels to select, no difficulty options, no display options, control options, sound options… nothing. This includes a complete lack of multiplayer, something that seems like this game would be built around.

Bounce House has a decent premise and an okay graphical style, but otherwise this is an absolute disaster of a game, one that’s completely lacking content and options, is sorely hurt by the lack of multiplayer, is dragged down by mundane, brainless, repetitive gameplay, and is further damaged by some nasty framerate issues. Even at $1, don’t waste your money on this game.

tl;dr – Bounce House is an Arcade-style game where players bounce around on inflatable arenas trying to slam down to eject out AI-controlled characters. It’s not a bad premise, but it is absolutely ruined by a large list of problems. Horrible framerate issues, simple brain-dead gameplay, mindless AI, a complete lack of options and content, no multiplayer… this game is an absolute mess, and even at the low price of $1, this game is not worth it.

Grade: D-

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