Good old Ballance. I know it better than my
own pocket by now.

I have never been the biggest fan of indiegaming, but when a friends introduced me to a game about rolling a ball a few years back, I was sold.

The game - Ballance - was made by a small german company, and the best way to describe the game is "rolling a ball from A to B". Ofcourse, it's not that simple. The ball is trapped in high air, and has to complete a track to reach the exit. The track consists mainly of blocks and rails. The ball is capable of switching between three forms, but only when rolling over a designated block for this. The three forms are paper, wood and stone. The paper ball is very light and doesn't roll very well. However, it is capable of using certain abilities, built into the track, such as hovering, but is unable to handle heavy stuff like a blocking wood/stone ball or lowering a bridge. The wood ball is streamlined for speed, and can handle most heavy stuff, although not as efficient as the stone ball. The stone ball excels at lowering bridges, pushing away blocks, etc., but is very heavy to steer and cannot cope very well with steep slopes.

My obsession for Ballance has meant that I have completed the entire game some 100 times, so I was delighted when I two weeks ago read about "Spectraball". I bought the game, and at first became a little disppointed at how unlike Ballance it was.

Spectraball.
The similarities may seem small in looks,
but it's there in gameplay!

The disappointment soon vanished, though, when I discovered the worlds of Spectraball. It's a very beautiful game, and even though it is just about rolling your ball from A to B, it has the added feature that all times are recorded and distributed by steam, meaning that you can quickly compare yourself to the rest of the world. Realising your bad times, adds new competition to the stages you've already completed, as you now want to end up amongst the fastest times. This is a huge challenge, especially since the fastest times are done by skipping entire areas of the maps by acing certain jumps or by putting together paths from area to area in cunning ways.

The only downside is that the game only contains 6 worlds, each consisting of three maps, but hopefully useradded conetent will be available soon.

If you have 10 Euros to spare, buy the game and try to beat my times ;)