By John Walker on October 21st, 2008 at 8:45 pm.
Spectraball has arrived on Steam, from indie devs Flashcube Studios. For a mere $9 (plus taxes), it’s somewhere between Marble Madness and Super Monkey Ball, with more bloom effects than the Chelsea Flower Show. We’ll have more thoughts on it once we’ve had a chance to play it.
21/10/2008 at 21:26 Dorsch says:
Is this good? I like marble games, but they rarely bring anything new to the table.
21/10/2008 at 21:34 Cronus says:
This looks a lot like Switchball. I’d be very interested in hearing comparison’s if anyone has played both. Otherwise I doubt I’ll spend the money on this when I can go back to switchball and beat the last collection of levels.
21/10/2008 at 21:48 scott says:
Bad ass !!! I love ball rolling games. I’ll definitely post comments after I get a chance to play it
21/10/2008 at 21:53 Kennel says:
Hmm.. there have been many marble games, but can anyone name this?
-About 10 years old
-10-15 levels
-Possibly freeware
-Quite crude 3d-graphics with some nice particle and lightning effects
-Ramps, loops, trampolines, cannons, power ups etc.
-Last map had a castle
21/10/2008 at 22:02 Stuk says:
This was almost an impulse buy, but I couldn’t find any reviews and no demo. And it does just look like another rolling ball game….
21/10/2008 at 22:20 Tanner says:
@Kennel: Ballance?
21/10/2008 at 22:34 manintheshack says:
The first review is on my blog. http://deadpixelpost.blogspot.com/2008/10/review-spectraball.html
Check it oot. It’s a really fun game, but you need to stick at it and get past the initial frustration.
21/10/2008 at 22:35 Kennel says:
@Tanner: Ballance?
Nope, older than that. All game objects (well except the castle) were very abstract and colorful.
(I’m not sure why I’m asking for this, because I wouldn’t play it more than 10 minutes. And these all are pretty much the same.)
21/10/2008 at 22:37 manintheshack says:
It’s not far off Ballance, but because the levels are timed and there are online leaderboards it turns it into something akin to trackmania with spheres.
21/10/2008 at 22:48 Masterdog says:
Nothing beats Marble Madness. My first favourite game.
21/10/2008 at 22:49 noggin says:
marble blast? (no more marble games for me…)
21/10/2008 at 23:00 shinygerbil says:
Kennel: it’s a long shot but maybe you’re thinking of Neverball? I’m pretty sure that isn’t 10 years old though!
As for this one, I’m a sucker so I bought it – crashes on startup.
:<
22/10/2008 at 04:02 ryanb says:
@ shinygerbil: yeah, you have to download physx; the installer with the game isn’t working with steam quite right as of right yet but its being worked on. This thread should help:
http://flashcubestudios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=60
22/10/2008 at 07:57 Dave says:
The music from Marble Madness started running through my head as soon as I read the words. That was an awesome soundtrack.
22/10/2008 at 08:30 pepper says:
This game definitely looks like fun! Il get it ASAP so i can give it a go. You can hardly go wrong with those amounts of money.
22/10/2008 at 14:12 shinygerbil says:
@ryanb: thanks for the tip – but it didn’t work. ;) Well, I’ll keep trying anyway!
Sigh…my computer crashes with lots of things these days. Something to do with most of the components being well over 5 years old, methinks…?
22/10/2008 at 15:59 scott says:
Kennel: Only thing I can think of is “I got some balls”…
http://www.caiman.us/scripts/fw/f822.html
It’s not quite 10 years old yet (almost) but it sounds very similar to your description. I love that game BTW. There is a castle level although it’s not the last level.
Another great ball rolling game that everyone should play is the Metaball mod for UT2k4. Very very refined gameplay for a mod. :-D Too bad the author canned part 2. :(
22/10/2008 at 16:38 Jetsetlemming says:
I’ve been told the game is shit- extremely buggy and unfinished.
23/10/2008 at 14:40 isolated1 says:
It doesn’t seem to be as well programmed as Switchball, it looks worse, its not as smooth. I probably wouldn’t have paid for it if I had tried a demo before I bought it. Its a bit amateur.
23/10/2008 at 15:23 scott says:
From the video though, it looks to be a lot more dexterity based. Switchball is basically just a bunch of “Here’s a physics puzzle where the solution is relatively obvious” Solve it, move on to the next one. Etc.
I desperately wish I could play this thing right now but, alas, I am too broke at the moment :(
23/10/2008 at 18:37 pepper says:
I just played it a bit, after giving it a go at school this morning. It didnt run well on those computers and the ball was rather hard to control. But on my own rig with my own controls at home it worked just like it should.
The first few puzzles are pretty straight forward, after this they can get quite challenging and presume you have full control off the ball, and insight in how it will react. This is also were the fun starts, here you need to think, time and coordinate your actions to solve the puzzles. Which give quite a satisfactory feeling when you finish them! I have to leave house in a bit, but if i wouldn’t need to then i would be playing this game all evening. Definitely worth the 10$!
25/10/2008 at 03:25 Oliver says:
Kennel that would be marble blast gold. That is one of my favorite games of all time by the way.
28/10/2008 at 19:51 Harvey62 says:
Went back and forth with Steam about crashes at startup for a few days. Finally went to the forums and fixed the problem in a few minutes. Neat game
15/09/2009 at 23:32 Vinraith says:
@RPS
“We’ll have more thoughts on it once we’ve had a chance to play it.”
You guys have been thinking about this one for a long time, I guess. :)
Seriously, though, DID you guys ever play this one? I notice it’s $5 on D2D right now.