If you’re an OG Monkey Ball physics purist like myself, then I cannot in good faith recommend this game.
1. Camera
The camera in this game seems to go in the direction your left joystick is facing and not the direction your character is moving. This means that if you’re trying to slow down (holding the left stick back) while rolling down a hill, the camera will think you’re trying to go uphill so it pans backwards even though you’re technically still moving down the hill. This is especially prevalent in the “Tilted Rings” and “Pachinko” stages.
To fix this, they added a free camera that you can change with the right joystick, and I appreciate it. It’s extremely helpful for stages like “Exam” where I need precise angles to move forward. But most of the time, especially with “Tilted Rings”, I’m using it because the camera doesn’t go where I expect it to, so I correct it myself.
The default camera settings are a little slow to my liking. Again, if you’re a purist, I’d set the camera sensitivity to +2. It makes turning much more fluid.
2. Bounce
This feels like the ball is made of rubber. Why do you bounce so much? I can only imagine trying to play “Opera” with the bounciness from this game. Oh wait, you do. It’s called “Stairs”. And you can’t smoothly roll in “Rings” (a different stage from “Tilted Rings”) because you bounce way too much.
It’s not just a problem with bouncing on the floor, it also affects your impact with walls. The stage “Ceiling Fan” is a perfect example where the wall is supposed to keep you safe from the wind blowing you off, but more often than not, the wind pushes you into the wall and you bounce off too hard and fall off the other side.
3. Friction
This is my biggest problem with the game. In short, it feels like you’re on ice. There are times where the ball isn’t even rolling, yet your character is still sliding on the stage, and that’s honestly unacceptable. The ball has very little grip, and it can make stopping or changing direction a chore. At that point, you have to turn way sharper than you think you do because you’re still sliding in the direction you were previously going. I’m glad the game preserves momentum unlike Banana Mania, but the lack of friction ruins what momentum I gathered. There is a rational middle ground here.
You might say this game was “built with those physics in mind,” but there are plenty of times where I thought to myself that if I slid and bounced less, a lot of these stages would be less frustrating to get through. When I’m fighting myself to turn and bouncing off of walls that are supposed to keep me safe, there’s no way you can build a stage to accommodate that. The OG physics are not a nostalgia issue, they genuinely worked better with impact, precision, and acceleration. For a reference, I went back to Rolled Out, and it has none of these problems.
Despite everything I just said, it doesn’t make the game entirely unplayable. Maybe you don’t care about physics as much as others, so I’ll talk about some of the other features now.
LIVES
The life system is genius. Instead of just a set number of lives, every 1000 points = 1 life. So if you get 4,000 points by entering a goal, you have 4 more. It’s a lot more interesting (and forgiving) to have lives based on score rather than a set amount. And if you go below 1000, you don’t lose, you just have 0 score.
GIMMICKS
I can see a lot of inspiration from Portal with the warps, moving objects onto buttons, and levitation beams. The warps aren’t actual gates, so if you touch one, you’re going to be facing the same direction on the the other side no matter what. I find myself creeping up to every single warp just in case.
I don’t see how moving the purple balls onto buttons is better than just having switches. That’s just an extra step.
It also has levels where parts of the stage only appear when you’re looking at specific eye platforms so you have to complete the stage with the camera always facing them. Having a stage where you have to look at a certain angle at all times is slow at best and tedious at worst. These are always my least favorite stages on every difficulty.
Finally, there are boost pads and bounce pads. The boost pads are great for gaining speed or designating where to go. They’re very cleverly used in some stages to figure out mazes. Now, there’s the bounce pad. It is extremely inconsistent with how you bounce off. Sometimes it’s high, sometimes you barely move off the ground. You can never tell how you’re going to bounce off of these things, so there’s not a hugely reliable way to use them.
TEXTURES
Very faithful to Monkey Ball. It drives me nuts when other games don’t do the checkerboard textures. It’s not just an aesthetic, it’s there to show depth perception. Can you imagine trying to beat stages that are a solid color? It would be awful. So thank you for keeping that texture consistent.
I always turn shadows off in games like this. There are a ton of times where it obstructs your view.
ENVIRONMENTS
They’re all the same. It’s all a synthetic, futuristic look, and the music reflects that, too. I know environments have never been a huge factor in these games, but it would have been nice to see more. For the whole game, you’re inside a PC case.
MUSIC
Phenomenal. That’s all I can say. This game inspired me to check out Anthony Seeha’s other work, and he is a very talented musician. I will rock Alter and Obsession in any playlist.
SETTINGS
You can change horizontal dead zone, camera sensitivity, stage tilt, and other options in the menu. I think we should be able to change the bounciness and friction as well, but that’s just me. They also give you a test room, but it’s just a flat floor. What good is that? Why not add a little obstacle course to test the skills and new settings?
MODES
There aren’t any party games, but there are special modes where you can make stages invisible, apply a random modifier every level, and you have to avoid energy (bananas).
STAGES
160 is a substantial amount. And it spaces it evenly in the modes with 20, 30, 40, 50, and 10. Thank you for not being Rolled Out which put 109 in one mode. That being said, Expert is the one I played the least because of how long it takes to beat. Plus Master only has 10 and gives you the most tokens anyway.
The goal is no longer a gate, it’s an object that has to be smashed in order to beat the stage. This allows for more creativity on approaching goals from multiple angles. Plus you don’t have to worry about bouncing off the goal posts anymore.
The level design is very faithful. It also does a great job of letting you complete stages at your own pace. There’s never a time where it feels like you’re just waiting for the goal to show up (Arthropod, Entangled Path, etc).
There are some stages that bear the same names and designs as ones from Monkey Ball. Some of them are fine and a nice callback to the games this is based on. Some of them, however, are just butchered versions of better stages. “Launchers” for example. Was this level play tested? Half the time the launcher throws you off in the opposite direction. “Launchers” from Monkey Ball 2 threw you up a wall, giving you a good idea of where to land. Ballygon’s version launches you in the air with no wall, so you could be flung in any direction, and there’s no telling where you’re going to fall. Even the minimap can’t help you there.
I do appreciate seeing indie Monkey Ball games. While I wait for Banana Rumble to come to Steam, I’ll always have these games (and the OG’s) to hold me over. But I cannot recommend Ballygon in the state that it’s in. It’s not that it’s broken or buggy, it just doesn’t control well, and some of the stage design is very flawed.
If nothing else, definitely check out Anthony Seeha on YouTube and tell me that Alter isn’t a certified banger.
