Rebounder is one of the two best games I played at PAX West earlier this month, with the other being Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse. That’s excellent company to keep, and truthfully, Rebounder has some of the most unique visuals I’ve seen in a game in quite a long time.
Rebounder is a precision platformer developed by ThirtyThree Games and published by Aggro Crab. It looks like it was pulled straight out of a comic book, with paper, print, and ink styles. It was one of the last demos I played on the final day of PAX, and I’m so glad that I got a chance to try it out once the seemingly never-ending line thinned out a bit.
You can also check out Retcon’s Rebounder interview with ThirtyThree Games’ co-founder Logan Gilmour to read about the game’s influences, art style choices, difficulty balancing, and more.
Rebounders are workers who run lines through dangerous terrain to deliver cargo or other valuable merchandise from point A to point B. That’s your role in this game. The 20-minute demo began with a story cutscene in which the futuristic vehicle you’re in breaks down. The driver of this odd-looking robot bus sends you out into the cold to find help from the nearest town. I was a bit confused at first, but the comic paneling and speech bubbles with funny dialogue brought a smile to my face regardless.
The tutorial put me through the basics of rebounding – jumping across gaps, along walls, and over obstacles to make it from one side of the screen to the other unharmed. That all sounds simple until the main gameplay mechanic changes everything. There are round, throwable alien objects (I’ll just call them balls for clarity’s sake) that can be used as temporary platforms to provide an extra jump in midair. You can pick up the balls and throw them in any direction, which allows for creative problem-solving and dynamic platforming options.
The balls can also bounce off flat surfaces. My eyes widened the first time I managed to ricochet – or rebound – a ball off a wall, then jump off of it as it returned to me, allowing me to reach a higher platform. And that’s basic. Partway through the demo, I was stringing several midair jumps together using more than one ball, walls, and some fish as platforms.
Sometimes, a ball needs to be thrown at a switch or panel to open the way forward while you’re falling through the air. There’s a lot to think about, and you need to analyze the entire screen to understand what the stage is asking of you before taking that first leap. I was using everything at my disposal to move toward my goal. You need to see Rebounder in motion to truly understand what I mean.
Once I understood how many options I had with the platforming, I was able to get creative to reach two secret locations. I only realized that they were secrets because of their color schemes. The backgrounds and primary colors change every time you reach a new screen, but the secret locations always have the same color palette – at least for the level I played through.
While the colors throughout the game shifted constantly, the secret areas were always shades of blue and red. And there was always a caged animal that needed to be freed at the end of a tricky platforming section. Thankfully, I was able to free the two animals I found, without embarrassing myself in front of the onlookers standing in line to play next.
In our interview with ThirtyThree Games’ co-founder, Logan Gilmour, he described Celeste as the team’s “north star” for structure and difficulty. I could feel it during the short demo. I could see how the stage was advancing to gradually test my reactions and problem-solving. It was just a glimpse, but I could see a fraction of the vision for the rest of the game. And I loved it.
Sadly, as soon as I started to reach a platforming flow state, the demo ended. The final screen showed me all of the secrets I missed, and I immediately had the urge to run through the stage again. Rebounder gave me that ‘one more time’ feeling that makes you want to retry a level over and over until it’s perfected. I’m looking forward to when the game launches in 2027 so that I can get my runback and really put my rebounding skills to the test.
