Pongerground

Pongerground is the most Shufflepuck Café-like game I’ve seen yet on the Playdate. It’s a bit Breakout or Arkanoid, but you’re really just moving your little bar around at the bottom of the screen, battling a unique CPU player at the top of the screen. You have a few shields behind you, guarding your goal in case a ball gets through, but it all comes down to the first one that makes five goals wins as you move up a Mortal Kombat-esque tower towards the boss. And, at first, this feels like such an easy task.

But, like Super Mario 3D Land before it, the first game is just the easy part. After you beat the first six levels, including the final boss (I did this and barely got scored on at all), then you unlock the B-side of the game. More crazy stuff happens to the ball, the enemies are faster, and there are a lot more chances for a multi-ball. I tried for days, but I could not beat the B-side. And I’m not too shabby at this, I thought! And there’s even more after that! (I only know this because of the online leaderboards that I am not on.)

First tip: play with the crank, and max out the sensitivity. Moving with the D-pad is just too slow. And this brings me to the one thing I’d love to see, controls-wise: please let “up” on the crank default to the center of the screen, and let me move all the way left and right by tilting the crank just 90 degrees each way. Sometimes, I got stuck in a corner because I worked the crank all the way around and forget which way is which, even after beating a large portion of the game without that issue. Once things get really intense near the end (especially after accidentally freezing yourself with a power shot), it’s easy to go too far with the cranking.

It’s really straightforward, and that’s one of its strengths. The game is mostly just moving left and right, defending your goal while trying to score on the opponent. Depending on what side of the paddle you hit the ball with, the angle of your return will change, a bit like in Wii Sports Tennis. There are lots of switches for the ball to interact with on the playfield, like a pinball table, and they’ll activate when you roll a ball over them. Some will fire the ball off in a different direction, or turn on a secondary safety paddle for the opponent, or add another ball to the fight. Each ball starts off very slow (almost too slow), but there are so many ways to amp the speed up almost too high in just a moment’s notice.

Each time you hit the ball with your paddle, a small gauge will start to fill. Once it’s maxed out, you can hit B and then your next shot will be faster and freeze/slow down your opponent. But be careful: if you just bounce it off the wall instead and you’re the next to touch it, you’ll be the one that gets frozen. It’s a fun mechanic that can backfire, so that adds some strategy to knowing when is the best time to use it, especially when the opponent has activated his second safety paddle, which won’t eat your power shot.

It’s not an overly long game at only 18 levels (I wasn’t even good enough to see them all, but I’m not giving up!), but the challenge ramps up so much that you’ll be really sweating trying to juggle everything happening as you get deep into it, and you’ll feel so cool when you finally nail that last shot. There are tiebreakers for when multiballs make you both win at the same time, and – just like in real-life tennis – losing one of these feels worse than anything else that can happen on the court. But you can always just try again, and the longer you play each round, the higher your score will get. So try not to win too quickly and definitively, you know?

I didn’t really know what to expect when I started this up, since Pongerground could be… anything, as long as it was Pong-like. And then I thought it was maybe too easy, or too short, but neither of those things ended up being true, either! It feels really good to play with the crank, and you’ll get so entirely focused and engrossed by the action in a way that feels like it happened more when I was a child in the backseat with my Game Boy. It’s like a cousin to Devils on the Moon Pinball, and it’s great to play for just a few minutes or an hour.

And I know we’re not there yet, but this would be a terrific local multiplayer game if there was the technology for that. Maybe on the Playdate 2? I’ll practice until then; I still have some achievements to get.

Oh, one last thing: the walls recoil a bit when the ball bounces off of them, and it’s one of those tiny things that adds so much character and tactility to the overall product. I love noticing things like that, which maybe could get taken for granted. Games this neat don’t just happen; they are lovingly crafted by a small team of people that really care. Love it.

(Released April 14, 2026, on Catalog. Copy provided by developer.)