I’ve been having a hard time writing about NBA Bounce. I don’t mean to say that I can’t decide if it’s “good” or “bad” or any other marker of quality. If anything, the first impression players will get from Unfinished Pixel SL’s title will be the same impression they’ll take away when they put the game down for the final time. I also fully understand the concept behind NBA Bounce. The game wants to be a party basketball game aimed at younger audiences that might not be old enough to play the NBA 2K series of titles, but I don’t think that the game leans into that “party game” angle to justify itself.
Still, NBA Bounce is a competent basketball game. You can play as one of 30 official NBA teams in quick 3v3 matches where you can sprint, shoot, pass, dunk, and do many of the other things you’d come to expect from an NBA game. The best thing about the gameplay is that the control scheme is easy to pick up and moderately difficult to play well. Most actions can be relegated to one of two buttons, which is simple enough for the target demographic (young children) to grapple with, and there’s enough gameplay variety to put that simple control scheme to the test. There are a lot of offensive and defensive maneuvers you can perform depending on the situation. NBA Bounce also has the typical game modes you’d expect to find in a game like this. You have your Pick-Up Game mode for quick matches, Tournaments (which should be self-explanatory), Full Seasons, and a Party Mode which adds different modifiers to games to change the experience. Though I found the number of modifiers party mode offered to be lacking, I did appreciate the creativity of some of the modifiers, such as a moving 3-point line and the ball occasionally bursting into confetti. The biggest praise I can give to NBA Bounce is that it’s a competently made basketball game.
The second biggest praise I can give to the title is its presentation. It’s not the most graphically impressive or stylistically ambitious game I’ve ever played, but NBA Bounce has a decent amount of charm. Character models are rendered in this cutesy, chibi-esque art style. You can play as either cartoony humans or the actual mascots, and you can customize your characters with a plethora of cosmetics you can acquire from playing the different game modes. Is it the most in-depth character customization you’ll ever have? No, but it has enough variety for you to have a decent amount of fun with.
That’s really what NBA Bounce amounts to in the end: it’s a decent amount of fun. While I don’t think it leans hard enough into the “party game” parts of its identity to carve a definitive identity for itself, it does enough to justify itself as a nice little title that I would recommend to younger players. At least, that is what I would say if the game wasn’t $50. While that is still cheaper than the NBA 2K games, I still think that’s a ridiculous price point for such a simple title. In the end, I give NBA Bounce a generous 7/10. For all those interested in the game, I would recommend waiting for it to go on sale.
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Related: Reviews by Josh Freeman
I love games and love talking about games. Some of my favorites include action games (both 2D and 3D), metroidvanias, roguelikes, shooters, and Indies.
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