Battle Bouncers Review

Alliteration is Key

Battle Bouncers is created by Game Hive Corporation, who claims to be “the leading developer of mobile games.” Personally, I’m gonna take their word for it because they also made Tap Titans, which is a favorite of mine. They also did Beat the Boss, which is okay, I guess. The main takeaway from these titles is that this company just has a thing for alliteration.

This game’s full title is Battle Bouncers – RPG Breakers, which insinuates an RPG style. It somewhat achieves this, but not to the extent that I would call it an actual RPG game. It lacks the expansive setting and variation of a true RPG. It’s not solely a brick breaker game, though. There’s just enough gameplay variation and a smidgen of character backstory to give it a pass as an RPG/brick breaker hybrid.

Bare Minimum Plot Elements

Backstory is, as previously mentioned, somewhat lacking. I’m gonna go ahead and spice it up for the sake of the review.

Imagine. You’re a valorous hero, congregated with other heroes from across the strangely indeterminate lands to perform an annual ceremony that keeps evil at bay. Maybe there’ll be light refreshments afterwards. Maybe you’ll hit it off with a cute elf at the snack table.

Before you can further ponder what may happen after the ceremony, you realize something has gone terribly wrong.

The “True Enemy” has returned, despite heroes best attempts at quelling his—her—their? terrors. He (or she) has sealed away all the older generations of heroes in crystal shards and has filled the land with monsters. It’s up to you and your ragtag team of upstart protagonists to rescue these heroes and defeat this amorphous and ungendered evil.

Basically, it’s beat the bad guy, save the world, the whole shebang. Going in, we lack the more immersive plot that a true RPG would give us. We don’t even get a name for this enemy—it’s just the “True Enemy,” which leaves it to the player’s imagination to come up with a multitude of ideas as to what this evil could possibly be. I like to believe that its student loans.

Characterization is Fun

Game Hive’s characterization of playable heroes gives Battle Bouncers a little more of an RPG feel. Characters get their own backstories in their character cards, as well as beautifully drawn little faces. You don’t really get to explore the places they come from, but the information provides some fun world-building for the imaginative mind. This is something that Game Hive also did well in Tap Titans, and it’s every bit as entertaining here.

Besides their fun little blurbs, you can also find information that’s more pertinent to the game, such as their skills, power, health, and all the other basic stats.

But how do I level them up, you ask. By playing the game, silly! Everything you could possibly need to train your characters—runes, experience, shards, gold, diamonds—can be collected in the different stages.

Take it in Stages

Gameplay itself works mostly as regular brick breaker games do, only with more special power-ups and interesting baddies to fight against. These bad guys include, but are not limited to: wood blocks, stone blocks, little pissant knights, and evil wizards. These brick breaker battles occur in different “stages,” or levels.

The amount of levels ranges from 200-1000 from what I can tell, that take place in over 10 kingdoms. There are also “heroic” versions of the same stages that offer up more cool items when you complete them. Battle Bouncers starts you out with about 10 sub-levels per stage, but they add more as you progress.

But that’s not all! We’ve also got towers, which are just harder stages that give you cool prizes (such as “tower tokens” to use in the store). There are also different daily quests to complete (such as buying at least 3 items from the store). In addition to all of that, there are different clans made up of other players, with normal clan/guild rules for joining or creating (that give you “clan tokens” that you can spend at the store). This variety in gameplay also lends to its RPG-ish status.

You need a certain amount of energy to battle, as well. Energy gets slowly replenished over time but can also be bought with diamonds. You can get diamonds either through battles (that you can’t play without enough energy) or for actual cash in the store.

Did I Mention the Store?

There’s also an in-game store, in case you didn’t catch my subtle hints. You can buy shards, runes, scrolls and potions (more items used to level skills up), and whatever else your heart desires. As long as you have the gold or the diamonds to pay, that is. Or the actual money to pay for the gold and diamonds.

Typically, you get enough in battles to pay for anything you might need in the store. If you’re like me, though, and you want to just keep playing all day long to beat this stupid tower, you burn through a lot of energy way too quickly. This means you end up spending diamonds that could be better spent leveling up characters.

It’s one of those paywalls in which you have to be patient for your energy to refill. It doesn’t actually bar you from playing certain levels, towers, or other such sundry. You can only play as long as your in-game energy lasts. After that, you either pay for more, or wait until tomorrow.

Overall, I’m a fan of Battle Bouncers. I’m a fan of the graphics, the music, the strategy that’s needed in playing. I’m not so much of a fan of the fact that I need to buy things from the store to complete my daily quests, but we all have our vices. Theirs is making me go to their store. In regard to its RPG claims—the RPG aspects are more of a “fun twist” than anything more, but they push it beyond a normal brick breaker game. I like this weird little hybrid game. And now I’m gonna defeat this freaking tower.