In order to make the Bouncer format work properly, I'm going to need to give the player a different kind of control scheme.
I'm almost tempted to strip away the "constantly bouncing" form of the ball, and go for something more like Soccer Kid on the Amiga.

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Part of the reason is that it would be nice to have a fully controllable player character. That is, left and right movement! Otherwise classic Bouncer requires an automated movement to keep things in line.

But without proper alignment the ball won't really bounce right, and if I allow for cheated alignment, then how do you force the ball left and right, ahead of the player?

I'm imagining the following scenario..



Player wants to walk under the wall, whilst ball should bounce over the top.
I'm probably going to add a "Shoot" button, to bounce the ball ahead of the player.
.. I think..

But then what do you do about standard movement.
When moving normally, the ball should be given the right momentum to meet up with the player, at the next bounce.
Similarly, if the player stops where they are, then the ball should bounce simply up and down. But then if the player moves whilst the ball's in midair, the ball won't follow him.
Real world physics don't appear to be workable in this game, at all.

I may need to go a little bit "weird" in order for it all to work, correctly..

I'm honestly not sure how well this game's going to turn out!!