Is there any way to configure kbounce to reduce its difficulty? Whoever is "enhancing" kbounce must think that harder is better because new versions keep introducing additional huge challenges. Now the walls are drawn at a snail's pace. I used to be able to get up to level 10, now level 2 is an accomplishment. Thanks for any suggestions.

I'm afraid you're not the only one making these observations. I suspect that they're accidental regressions rather than intentional changes though, caused by minor changes in behaviour elsewhere in the stack. All I can suggest is filing a bug report at bugs.kde.org, or if you're familiar with code getting in contact with kde-games-devel@kde.org.