A Game With Balls (AGWB) recently rolled onto the AppStore, delivering a sterling punch and kick to the survival-shooter genre.
The debut release of Puppy Punch Productions, AGWB is fun, challenging and long-lasting; and, quite frankly, it’s a breath of fresh air, too. As the player, you’re responsible for the protection of your centrally located turret, and must shoot descending objects (of various shapes and sizes) which threaten to destroy it. If a single approaching object hits home, then it’s game over.
The premise is simple but, as previously suggested, it’s quite challenging and thus addictive. Part of this stems from the impressive physics engine – interestingly enough, your cannon fire doesn’t destroy encroaching balls, instead it just moves them out-of-the-way. However, should this cause two balls to knock together in the process, this will often result in an unpredictable and challenging pattern of movement. Your fire rate is also restricted by an ammo counter that runs along the bottom of the screen, which will replenish itself automatically during period of non-use, further adding to the difficulty.
This difficulty increase is countered, to some degree, by the inclusion of two firing variations: light or heavy. Heavy fire stems from pressing two fingers on the screen at once, and whilst it’s far slower, the larger bullets have considerably improved pushing power. Light fire, as you’d imagine, is quick yet weak.
However, there’s also a strategic element to the firing process, as bullets can be bounced off both descending objects and also the left and right walls. This also helps to alleviate the issue of a lack of ammo, if you’re careful enough to place your shots, which you’ll soon discover to be an important skill to learn, as the game steadily increases in difficulty.
There are four levels to choose from, with each additional stage needing to be unlocked, by points earned, through playing. The difference between the levels is predominantly aesthetic, though, and the gameplay remains almost identical throughout.
Atop strategic gameplay, AGWB also features achievements and leaderboards, alongside the possibility to share your high-scores with friends, via popular social networking websites; Facebook and Twitter.
AGWB primarily uses a touch-based control system, by which you hold your finger on the direction in which you want to fire repelling balls. Although easy to grasp, this creates problems in that your finger then often obstructs your view.
The development team seem to have included an alternative control system by which to counter this problem (tilt control) yet alas this caused the application to crash in the AD HOC build version that I was given. That said, given that the game has since been updated following commercial release, this may no longer be an issue.
Still, for a debut title, AGWB is a hugely rewarding experience, that’s full of depth, particularly for the low-cost. If Puppy Punch Productions continue to deliver such high quality and unique applications, there’s no doubt that they will soon become a household favourite.
You can download A Game With Balls (69p) from the AppStore, here.
Score – 9/10
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