I play platformers like Rebounder cautiously most of the time. I sidle up to an edge, judge distances and my own capabilities, and think for several seconds before attempting a jump. I usually fall and have to start over, which will force me to think again for a time about my next jump before tentatively trying it again. I like this new trend, pioneered by Celeste, of respawning me immediately at the start of a room, no fuss, when I fail, because I will fail often. It saves me time to respawn so quickly, time I could spend thinking about my jump.
But as I get three rooms, four rooms, five rooms into Rebounder, I feel myself moving faster. I am picking up the weird little balls hanging from weird little vines, just within reach, and I am throwing them with increasing confidence in the direction they need to go. I am leaping after them, hitting the A button–phoom!–they explode and bounce me higher to the next platform. My weird little spaceguy worker moves fluidly, expectedly, exactly where and how I wish for them to go. I see the switch ahead of me, I fling the weird ball into it, then–phoom!–explode off the bounce just as the door opens.
I don’t stop, I don’t hesitate. I keep going. I fall into the next pit, and the line my spaceguy tied to a pole at the start of the room yoinks me backward to the beginning. I try again immediately, without pause. I know exactly what I did wrong and how to fix it.
Is this…sight reading? Am I sight reading a platformer? I am!
Wow! Rebounder has it! That feeling I crave from these Celeste-likes, of being a perpetual motion machine, an engine, that can just go and go, jump and jump, from room to room and challenge to challenge, fearless and skillful.
Here, look at the space person go:
I only played Rebounder for 20 minutes. I harbor no delusions that I will always sight read Rebounder so easily, but God, what a rush! What is it about Rebounder that gave me confidence in my own judgment? I’m still puzzling over it days later. It might be something in how slick and satisfying it was to just move in it. Little spaceguy moves at the perfect speed, jumps the perfect height. The explosions give a satisfying sound and poof of smoke and propel me so nicely. The pull back to the start is so nice and fast and also so perfectly in keeping with the game’s themes and overall style. The animations are so smooth, fluid in this lovely comic style, all the colors and edges faded a bit like an older issue, and occasional bouts of chaotic text in incongruous fonts (once, like a medieval manuscript?) spewed over the scenery. I want to read them, but I move too fast.
What is Rebounder about? I have no idea. I think I’m an interstellar blue-collar worker of some sort, and my job is to drag a line tethered to me across a map. I think this is an important job, but I also think I am probably doing it for a terrible corporation that does not pay well (if at all) and has me living in squalid company housing. So I’m sure the story will, with time, have something to say about that sort of thing. There is a bit of narrative between each map, where the person running the housing unit talks to me from behind a horrid, creepy helmet, but the characters talk like humans talk; that is, not explaining the nature of the world to an invisible third party. Good. Just how I like my sci-fi. Keep me guessing.
What a surprise! I hadn’t expected to love Rebounder when I took the appointment to play at PAX West. It didn’t seem like my aesthetic, not at a glance. I didn’t think I wanted to play another platformer where I spend a lot of time failing repeatedly. I felt wary and cautious after watching its trailer. But it seems that I do love this sort of thing if the deaths are accompanied by satisfying clicks and smashes and zaps and an immediate return so I can fail again. Yeah, to hell with caution. I’ll sign up to be a Rebounder.