BallBastic!

Game's an absolute scam. The ball controls like crap, constantly pulling to the left. The whole thing is an attempt to get you to spend a ton of money on extra lives. Don't even bother.

4/10 + its free + responsive ball controls - cant turn camera, AT ALL!!!! - you can pay real $$$ for more lives - no matter how far i get into the levels you can only start on level 1 - minimalist level design - no main menu controller support

앵간하면 하겠는데 게임에서 너무 냄새나요. 조작감도 그지 같은데 이거 하고 있으면 왜 하고 있지라는 생각이 너무 들고 특정 업적은 개 노가다라서 그냥 손 대기가 싫네요.

This game's store page is currently severely mistagged at the time of this review, applying "Casual" as its top tag. It's definitely not that. But it's also *absolutely* not the "hardcore", "easy to learn but difficult to master" high-skill-ceiling experience being proposed in its "About this game" section either. The game's movement physics-related mechanics were, at most, 1/16th-baked from the very start of development, and unfortunately, as a physics-based platformer, the single development choice of locking the movement physics in such a poor state before starting work on its level design ended up spreading into a very sad series of decisions majorly affecting the entire game that can be found ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE you look: - Diagonal acceleration is roughly ~40% faster than orthogonal acceleration. My guess is the movement script just adds a force to the ball on each direction of its movement axes along the camera's azimuth direction without any normalization or clamping being applied. - In order to prevent this from majorly affecting level design by allowing camera movement to influence how effectively the ball can be moved (or, i *seriously* hope not, in order to save development time by not even making the effort to change the ball's movement direction so it depends on the camera's azimuth), the decision to permanently lock the camera at a fixed angle was taken. - This predictably also had the effect of also majorly affecting level design in different ways. Right off the gate, one of the first levels encountered starts relying on diagonal movement being faster to place a ramp at an angle that couldn't be climbed otherwise. Things ONLY get worse from here. - Shortly after, a level is introduced involving a large-but-constricted vertical tube split-S into a small platform. Instead of restricting movement because earlier levels already required a certain degree of aerial control, the decision of restricting excessive speed on exit by increasing the ball's angular drag to unrealistic levels instead was taken. An attentive player would have already noticed the ball rotates slower than it moves and moves faster while airborne. This is my guess on why. - Then, a level with a rotating platform. While otherwise unremarkable, The rotating platform's implementation means despite appearing to move, it physically behaves as if at a standstill throughout its entire movement trajectory - an unforgivable error in a physics-reliant game. Things ONLY get worse from here. - Only 2 levels later, you meet with rotating low-polygon tori. Because they're non-kinematically rotated, you can get stuck between them and the floor through no fault of your own, even falling through the map in edge cases. I wasn't expecting the limitations of non-kinematic movement to negatively affect gameplay this soon. - Halfway through only the first set of levels, we're already seeing levels that are outright impossible to complete without exploiting the extra diagonal acceleration that was never explained to the player in the first place. - Bowl-shaped level. The angular drag means attempting to use centripetal acceleration will counterintuitively result in a failure. At this point the game's physics is actually getting in gameplay's way instead of contributing. - First game-over, achieved by a non-explained gameplay mechanic turned kaizo trap where doodads(collectibles) actively lower ball acceleration instead of giving points, without warning. Apparently i've somehow earned enough "ballcoin" to overflow the counter at the main menu into the negatives? - Starting over, level 2 has an unexplained bounce near the end platform resulting in the ball jumping over the finish and falling. Apparently the game punishes you for trying to speedrun it. - Back to where we lost at. You're given a long jump with nonstandard ball acceleration into a distant trampoline without any reference points available. - Several levels after returning to the previous failure spot, we see an actually-physically-simulated platform. What? Disbelief results in another restart, and another one afterwards. I decide to try it out in practice mode, [i]only to realize you're only allowed to practice a level after beating it.[/i] At this point i'm frustrated enough to cheat engine myself infinite lives, only to discover the number of lives is stored as a floating-point number. I'm starting to think the fixed camera was done out of sheer laziness on fixing the first implementation of the movement system. Turns out the way the way the ball is moved by force results in the already-unstable platform getting *pushed* into an even more unstable configuration if you're below its hinge point. Lesson learned: spend multiple cycles getting it into an oscillation so you don't move below it. - Actually nevermind, the level after that reverts to a non-physically-simulated rolling platform. The lack of physics in it trivializes the level so much i've somehow completed it by only holding the forward key on the first try. *facepalm* - 2 levels later, you're given a level consisting of at least 60 platforms placed in a square grid and changing directions in such a way you can't complete in time without having already gone through it enough times to memorize its layout. I'm feeling vindicated over having cheated myself infinite lives at this point, especially considering the inability to practice a level that hasn't been completed. - Completing it, i'm thrown back to the main menu because the "novice" difficulty means you're limited to playing the first 30 levels. You have to start over on another difficulty to keep playing. The other difficulties start with the same 30 levels in the exact same configuration, so what was the point of having it in the first place if the difficulty setting doesn't even mean you get a checkpoint to start from afterwards? At this point i'm frustrated enough to stop playing for now. Will try some more later and update the review. Nag me to do so if i haven't done it already after 2 weeks of the review being published; i'll keep comments open to the public. Until then, i'm assuming it doesn't get better on the other level sets. If you want a physics-based ball racer where skill plays more of a role, i'd suggest something like Marble Blast Web instead. From my current experience i don't think the proposed $4 price point is justified, but i'll try to update the review once the changes to reflect the new pricing model have been made.

⠀

I do not recommend

Игра интересная (наверное) но сделана слишком бедно =( https://youtu.be/ZJfDF6-Q3g4

this game is evil

I like that there's a lot of levels to play through, and you can earn more lives for your next play through. If you like Super Monkey Ball you'll enjoy this. Has a charm of PC games from the early 2000's that seems lost now.

Its a pretty fun and addicting little game. There's a pretty decent variety of levels and its easy to pick up and play in short intervals. Soundtrack is limited but also pretty groovy. Overall if you're looking for something to pickup and play in-between virtual meetings you might like what this has to offer Full disclosure: I was asked to do minimal beta testing while the dev asked for feedback, probably 90 minutes of beta testing total, There was certainly improvements made since my first pre-release test and they seem committed to continued improvement. That said I have no financial, social, or other obligation to give this game any recommendation or positive review.