▲ Recommended
1 hrs
While the art and theme are quite strange, its a really fun game with some clever design decisions. Some of the powerups like the internal comet, lightning and poison are great. The timer system on the powerups adds an interesting level of strategy. Definitely worth the incredibly low price. GG
▲ Recommended
2 hrs
Zombout.
Story:
There's really no story here so we're jumping straight to graphics.
Graphics:
Visually Pong Pong Crows isn't that impressive. You can see that it's a very simplistic game, not much color or highly detailed models, it's just the crows, different colored zombies and that's really all there is to it. It's definitely no looker, but I think for what it tries to achieve it does a fine enough job.
Audio:
I'm personally not a big fan of the audio design. When playing these type of games, I really want catchy tunes and satisfying audio effects that make me feel like I'm kicking ass, however the game goes for this very moody and droning type score which while it fits the overall theme of the game, however I'm personally not the biggest fan of that and wish they would have just went with a traditional score.
Gameplay:
From the footage you can easily tell that this game is a Breakout clone, but there is a unique twist. The blocks you need to break (AKA the zombies) will move every time your turn ends whenever the crows (aka the ball) land back on your paddle. This makes the game a kind of strategic type of Breakout instead of the one where you just have to constantly juggle the ball.
I'll begin with the positives. The game is fun, for the most part. It genuinely gets addictive at times and you just want to keep going and each level is the perfect amount of difficulty, so when you fail, you just want to get back into it because you know that you could have done something differently to have won.
There's tons of cool powers up like electricity and others that help you damage the zombies more, not to mention you can upgrade the ones you like so they can be even more helpful when you encounter them. I also mentioned the difficulty and yeah the game is somewhat hard, but not incredibly so, you'll definitely have to figure out different strategies for some of the harder levels.
But this is where the problems begin and the biggest one is the crows themselves. They're so difficult to control at times and when they land back on the paddle, they will land in a way where you will just simply not shoot anywhere helpful so you can have a bunch of bad turns back to back and get a failure, which is especially annoying if you're on one the hard levels and you wind up dying when you're close to winning.
Also some of the zombies are so incredibly spongy when they take damage that it's crazy annoying dealing with them, especially when there's a level full of them. Also you can sometimes just get stuck watching a crow attacking a singular zombie that's stuck in a certain way and while there's a feature where they will speed up if they're off the paddle too long, it still takes forever which is incredibly annoying.
Final Verdict:
For a cheap Breakout type game, Pong Pong Crows is a fun enough experience, however when the issues are present, holy boy are they hard to stomach. If you like these type of games I do recommend checking it out cause it is overall really fun, but otherwise I'd say skip it.
Final Rating:
6/10
Pros:
+ Game is addictive at times
+ Some really cool power ups
Cons:
- Audio design is mediocre
- Graphics are pretty bland
- Bizarre gameplay design decisions make it a slog at times
NOTE: This game was reviewed with a code provided by the developer/publisher on the behalf of the group Completing the Backlog, this did not impact my opinion on the game.
If you liked this review please consider joining https://steamcommunity.com/groups/completingthebacklog
