Pong came out in 1972 and is still as playable and relevant today as it was back then. You are in the gameplay every second of every round and that makes it a timeless classic regardless of any gaming trend. Many developers like to put their spin on the game and Tennistronic is the latest to give it a whirl.
Tennistronic released into early access as 1 or 2 player Tron-aesthetic inspired version of Pong. There are three levels of AI if you are playing solo but whomever is playing – the goal of the game is simple: first to 15 wins. You do this by using your barrier or bat to bounce a light ball back to your opponent and if they can’t bat it back, you win a point. Visually the Tron vibes do a lot of good for the game and I really enjoyed the fact the floor lights up wherever the ball has travelled as it can help you spot its trajectory much easier that way.
You bat looks like a school teachers board eraser as its thick and chunky and that plays a role as sometimes a ball can bounce off of the side and score you an own goal. This happens more than you’d expect because Tennistronic’s big twist is that upon every return hit in a rally, the ball gets faster and faster. If you are standing still when you hit the ball and return it, the speed increase is quite small. However if you slice into the ball, the speed increase is far greater and this is the central tactic of the game. All it takes is for this to happen twice in a rally and the ball becomes uncontrollable very quickly and each player will be trying to pre-empt future trajectories to give themselves half a chance of moving into a space to hit the ball. The players always move a constant speed and so the ball will eventually always get too fast and so someone will lose quickly. This tactic gives Tennistronic a naughts and crosses style of peril. If you trigger the move to increase the speed at the right time, you can wrong foot a player a good few moves ahead as you’ve mapped out an ideal end game. This is often when you’ve trapped someone into a corner and you can bat the ball the other way.
This works well, with semi-competent AI that on hard difficulty puts up a fair challenge. What Tennistronic currently lacks is much else aside from the basic gameplay loop. Sound effects are minimal. There are absolutely no game variations or gimmicks like an emergency dive you could deploy to save the ball once. It is also a little difficult visually to see the precise impact of your hit against where the ball will go next. This is because the game camera moves from above you to down beside you as you stray from centre court. Its designed to help you manage wall bounces from the side better but by helping that issue, it creates a depth perception problem sometimes instead. I’d misjudged the balls incoming trajectory by a small margin due to the camera shift more times than I care to admit, and whilst I did get used to it over time – having camera options would benefit the player in the long term.
All the basics are here for a decent pick up and play eSports pong inspired title. Early access is there to help polish the rough edges, sort the odd tech issue and add in depth and variation to the game (there’s only one court for example). I like the idea and the initial design, but it will need more content and variations of gameplay to make it a must have by the time it reaches V1.0. Basic, but with promise.
Review copy provided by the developer. Tennistronic is out now on Steam.
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