Neon Paddles: Revenge of the Ball

Saw this game in a YouTube video by MemoriaMatters where she reviewed random games released on December 30th 2025, and something about it just charmed me. And what the hell, it's costs 99 cents, so why not give it a try. I'm glad I did! It's a fun little time waster where you play a very angry ball on a rampage against some random red enemies; in that regard every level is a bit of a puzzle where you figure out the perfect combination of moves (and brakes) to smash your enemy before they smash you. But a really clever idea is in the roguelike system: every few levels you get to customize your angry little ball with perks that e.g. make you faster at the cost of reducing your braking power, or give you more damage but reduce your mobility. While I've only messed around with the game for a little bit (and am simply not very good at it) I get the sense that there are actually several viable ways to approach each level and I think that will give the levels a good amount of replayability down the line. I also like the ability to save your loadout as it exists at the end of a set of missions so that even if you lose the game, you can just pick up again from your last "checkpoint" as it were rather than having to grind all the perks from the start. The negatives? Well, there's a bit of missing polish here and there, mostly in the form of typos; the presentation of the levels is gorgeously simplistic but the actual menus and UIs feel a bit basic; and at one point I got stuck on a level (5-1, if the creator is reading this) despite having killed all enemies, though luckily this resolved itself after quitting to the menu and restarting. Also, at the moment the game seems quite short; despite several game overs I've managed to get through most of the levels in less than half an hour. But since from what I can tell this is the person's first game, and all of these issues can be very easily fixed by future updates rather than being core design flaws, I can certainly forgive them. So all told, a solid concept well executed, and all the more impressive for being a first release. I will certainly be keeping an eye on what comes next from Mr or Ms kbkbkbit :)