How to be good at Kabounce

A few simple tricks to rock in the multiplayer

Who am I to tell you what to do?

I got the 50 MVP Achievement in little above 8 hours playtime, but also did some challenges in that time (so it's not all PVP time).

While I'm not the perfect player, I must do something right. :)

If you're an advanced player, just skip to "Capturing Risk Free" - you'll like that one.

Loadout

Choose the "Flash Ability" that captures bumpers for you, NOT the one where you can electrify the bumpers.

Electrifying might be fun, maybe you even smash a few people this way, but it has it's drawbacks:

- Electrified bumpers are easily avoided
- It's a passive ability (e.g. it does not give you points).

Use this loadout:

Who to target?

So you want to smash some people - good! :)

But how to go about it? First, choose a target.

There's a live leaderboard at the top left of your screen:



So in the Screenshot above, you can see in the top right corner, that I'll have to go after "Mogelpack"

Since I'm in the blue team, I don't care about the blue names in that list, and the yellow name that's holding the most points is 'Mogelpack' - that's who we're after.

Now I noticed in this game that smashing comes almost as a reflex to some people. Get close to them, they smash.

While this gets them some points, it's not optimal. They use up their abilities faster while not scoring optimally.

Try to get the fattest hen, if you can. ;)

Smashing People

Here's a little anecdote that REALLY helpded me a lot:

A player - Q-Dah [props to you man!] - smashed me like 2 or 3 times in a row.
I didn't know how he did it, and when I realized it, I had to laugh hard:

The guy stayed at the BORDER of the arena, never in the middle. But he always AIMED at the center-bumper island.

As soon as someone captured the bumpers in the center, he smashed them.

I laughed of course because Q-Dah didn't bring something new to the table. He did, what you would do in any TDM really, stay at the edges, shoot to the middle. [You just improved your KD in CoD! :D]

So note: Middle Bumpers are DANGEROUS!

Here's an example of such a cluster of center-map bumpers:



There IS a way to cap these bumpers safely, I'll share how below.

So let's recap:


- Stay at the edges
- Smash to the center

How not to get smashed

Tactic 1: Be a hard target

The secret to do anything in this game is: SPAM THAT BOOST!

I jump, hit boost [Shift Key], when I hit the floor the boost speeds me up, and soon before the boost ends I already jump again and hit Shift for another boost. With your Mouse, alter directions to where you want to go, and you go in a VERY FAST ZIG-ZAG COURSE.

That's it, you avoided getting smashed 90% of the time.

Jump --> Choose Direction Mid Air --> boost --> Repeat

It's sad really, because the game becomes less cool once you know this, but really, always boost, no matter what you do, and you're such a hard target that almost noone smashes you.

You'll be boosting out of that smash-circle that appears when you're pursued and won't even notice it. Once boosting becomes second nature you'll improve rapidly. So again:

Jump --> Choose Direction Mid Air --> boost --> Repeat

Tactic 2: Escape fast

Remember in the "loadout" section when I told you to take the "Flash ability"?

Another reason is this: If you're slow for some reason, and you hear that beep that someone is about to smash you - RIGHT CLICK!

Your ball will then swoop off to the next few bumpers and make you a few points while the enemy wasted his ability.

If you don't have a Flash-ability handy, just LEFT CLICK. Yes, you wasted a smash yourself, but in doing so you catapulted yourself out or harms way. If you have max range for your smash [controlled by the mouse], you just brought about 1/3 of the arena between you and your pursuer.

Before anyone says "just dash man" or "just roll out of the circle it displays when someone attacks you" - yes these are methods you can use.

But the much safer, and foolproof way, is to use an ability (preferably flash, turning your disadvantage of avoiding the smash into making points [ In chess, you just ganied a tempo on your opponent. :) ] ).

You smashed someone and stole 1k points!!

So you just ruined someone's day, and he's likely to come after you - what do you do?

Well simple:

- DO NOT go to the center of the map!

- Make your rounds at the EDGE of the map (always boosting) and go in circles, clock- or counterclockwise, until that gate opens and you bring your sweet sweet stolen points home to mama.

But how do you keep making points?

- Always have a smash ability at hand so you can catapult out when you hear the beep and your boost is too slow.

- Use your Flash ability to capture Bumper islands at the edge as discussed in the section "Capturing Risk Free"

You got smashed - what now?

When you re-enter the arena you're high up in the air. I have a look from up there and make a "smashing entrance" to whoever sits in the center.

Resist the urge to smash the guy who just smashed you! He will most likely not be the best target.

You CAN pursue your smasher if it's a bot, or a player that's significantly worse than you, and you're confident to get him very fast.

But if you got smashed by a booster spammer like me (and you hopefully too), forget it, there are easier targets. ;)

The point is: use that high-ground when you re-enter the arena and divebomb that center area because there are always 1-3 people / bots there.

Capturing Risk Free

So here is a REALLY CHEESY one.

We're going to cheese a core game-mechanic here, I'm sure you noticed it, but did not pay attention, but after this, you will.

Okay, let me establish how the Flash Ability really works:

1) You roll in a direction X

2) You hit the Flash Ability [Right Click]
Your ball auto-captures bumpers at random

3) After the Ability-Animation, you AGAIN roll in direction X


Here's an image:


The second thing you must know about the Flash Ability is:

It will ALWAYS capture the bumpers you look at right now!

It will NOT capture some offscreen bumpers, but the ones closest to you on your screen.

So how are we going to cheese this?

Simple! When capturing cenral Bumper-Islands, you only PASS THEM FROM THE SIDE but never enter them!

When PASSING them, (you of course always boost-jump anyways, to be a hard target), just LOOK at the Bumper-Cluster MID-AIR WHILE PASSING IT and then HIT THE FLASH ABILITY!

So you're safe (because you didn't enter a center cluster of bumpers, you're still outside), but you capture most of them with your ability, and when johnny smasher sees that he lost the center and smashes it, guess what, you're LONG GONE, because you only PASSED it! :)

I have the following suspicion: When you hit your Flash Ability, your ball gets frozen and invisible at position X. You then see an animation where your ball caps the bumpers. After that, you see your ball again at position X and continue the game.

So by staying AWAY from the actual bumper-cluster, and ability-cheesing into it for capping, you never physically entered the danger-zone.

Guess where people will smash? Right at the center of this bumper-cluster, and NOT outside of it, where you really are.

This sounds more complicated than it is, really. More on that technique in the next section.

Capturing hard-to-reach bumpers

Okay, now that we know how to control our Flash Ability, we can cheese it some more:

Hard to rech bumpers, the ones high up somewhere. On some maps there are whole clusters on a "roof".

Well it's simple enough, gain some height, by catapulting yourself off a wall or by using the yellow boosters......



.........doublejump or dash mid-air to get closer to your hard-to-rech-target, LOOK AT IT and hit your Flash Ability - done!

As long as your hard-to-reach target is the CLOSEST bumper to you, and you look at it and fire your Flash Ability, it does NOT matter that in reality you didn't have the height to rech them!

Baslcally, just fly close to some hard-to-rech bumpers, look at them, hit your ability button and the game will do the rest.

And since you're already up there, why not smash the center as well? ;)

Conclusion

Here are the most important points you should take away form this guide:

1) Spam the Boost! Always, ALWAYS BOOST!

2) Stay at the edge, smash to the center

3) Only cap the center by only passing it and Flash-Cheesing into it

4) When you're loaded with points, and someone is about to smash you, Flash, or Smash yourself to safety

5) The Flash Ability will:

• capture the bumpers you LOOK at that are CLOSEST to you
  
  
• NOT alter your direction when you exit the animation

Make use of that behaviour.

[施钟意]

thank you

[JOHNNY GUEGGU]

Ah, alright, go ahead. I thought you just want to copy stuff and pass it off as 'your guide', that wouldn't be polite.
I'm all about sharing, if you mention my name somewhere and a link maybe it's all good! :)

[施钟意]

i mean i would put its by you and link you but ok, just asking.