Kid Ball Adventure is an approachable precision platformer where you play as a constantly bouncing ball. This means you’ll need to time all your movements around the fact you are always bouncing. It’s like playing a game with the jump button constantly pressed down but the game plays out around this mechanic.
Jumping needs to be timed to your bounce. Enemies can’t be hurt and so you’ll either bounce over or under them. Traps like spikes can be hopped over but also if you are bouncing, you’ll need to avoid the ceiling sparks too. Add in bounce pads, lifts and moving platforms and cannons and you have plenty to platforming to get right. You can retry each stage until you get it right, there are no lives here and each of the 100 stages is a single screen. Kid Ball Adventure doesn’t do anything hugely new but it just plays so nicely. The character movement is predictable and expected, there is no jank present at all. Collision detection is largely spot on too, something that’s often a problem with budget titles.
The platinum can be achieved after just 20 levels but I urge you to continue on. Kid Ball Adventure gets far more fun after the platinum as stages get more varied and interesting. The game is also playable in time trial mode for speedrunners, a no death mode to really test your skills and a hell mode which makes a harder mode for each level. It does a lot with its core mechanics and offers value with its cost.
So whilst Kid Ball Adventure won’t change the world, anyone who wants a budget but polished 2D platformer (and especially if you like speedrunning) should keep an eye out for it. One of the better low budget releases onto current consoles. Cross buy on PS4/5 too.
Review copy provided by publisher.
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