Bytten

RollyBall is like one of those handheld puzzle things with the little silver balls. This time you have to guide a single ball to the bucket at the end by gently, oh so gently, tilting the 3D level and letting gravity do the rest.

This game requires a steady hand, but visual spatial skills are more important because to succeed you really need to know intuitively how the level is sloping. Small movements from the initial flat position work well but you only need to forget the slope of the level for a second and you might as well go back to the start.

Fortunately there is some respite because each level has a few waypoints that act as restart points should your ball fall off.

The 3D graphics are simple and very colourful. The tiny ball sometimes sinks into the floor, which is not a good thing on a game that requires keen hand eye co-ordination. Some levels are so confusing that they look like optical illusions, and a 3D game like this really needs effects like raycasting shadows to aid the player because sometimes it is nearly impossible to work out what shape the level is, never mind its orientation.

The fonts and front end graphics are very poor and jaggy. These badly need fixing because for sake of a few bitmaps that important initial impression of the game is brought down. Like the graphics, the sound is generally low quality although the in game music was quite nice, with Vangellis style sweeps every now and again.

The levels start at tricky and rise to fiendish. Some require rolling along walls, and many include transparent sections that just get in the way. A ball speed indicator and some sort of spirit level would make this game more accessable.

RollyBall is a good idea for a game but I feel that some more work is required. More levels that start at easier, like lots of maze type levels, would make the game easier to play and more fun too. Longevity can be created by having a few really difficult levels but people generally prefer lots of easy ones. Options like active shadows, depth of field effects, or even some sort of stereoscopic or 3D glasses option could transform this game from an crushingly difficult novelty to the next big thing, but as it stands RollyBall comes across as a rough demonstration of an idea and not a finished game.

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