Get Wet and Retro With Splish Splash Pong

Splish-splash, imagine takin’ a path and suddenly being overwhelmed with an urge to play water-Pong. Yes, water-Pong totally exists. It’s not just a term made up on the fly for the purposes of describing a tennis game involving killer whales …

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Splish-splash, imagine takin’ a path and suddenly being overwhelmed with an urge to play water-Pong. Yes, water-Pong totally exists. It’s not just a term made up on the fly for the purposes of describing a tennis game involving killer whales and sharks.

Splish Splash Pong’s voxel-style graphics share a lot in common with the visuals from Hipster Whale’s Crossy Road, though the two games aren’t much alike gameplay-wise. The latter is a Frogger-style game, whereas Splish Splash Pong is a single-screen reflex / survival game that leans towards the “Flappy” side of the mobile game market.

splish splash pong

Your character is a floating toy that bounces in between two rubbery goal posts. Coins pop up as you scurry back and forth, and you’re awarded a point for each one you grab.

Tapping the screen immediately changes the direction you’re swimming in, which is necessary for survival: The swimming pool, or lake, or bathtub, or whatever you’re splashing around in is infested with sharks. They cut through the water horizontally at different speeds.

Since running into a shark means instant death (not necessarily the case in real life –Save the Sharks!!), building up any significant point count in Splish Splash Pong takes a lot of practice, some luck, and razor reflexes. You can use the coins you gather to buy different characters to bounce with, including a penguin, a frog, a pig, or a whale. They’re mostly cosmetic, though it makes you wonder how well a pig can swim in real life.

Splish Splash Pong is free to download. There’s not much there to keep you occupied for hours, but it won’t have a problem garnering some fans. It’s as twitchy as a twitch game can be.

In the early aughts, Nadia fell into writing with the grace of a brain-dead bison stumbling into a chasm. Over the years, she's written for Nerve, GamePro, 1UP.com, USGamer, Pocket Gamer, Just Labs Magazine, and many other sites and magazines of fine repute. She's currently About.com's Guide to the Nintendo 3DS at ds.about.com.