Forgotten Ball Demo

I can’t decide whether Forgotten Ball is a good game with poor implementation or one that plays poorly due to lack of polishing. However, regardless of the two, it is an interesting indie creation. It’s a puzzle platformer in which you must guide a ball through an immense 2.5D labyrinth that plays with your mind, more accurately, with how it perceives perspective.

The core idea to Forgotten Ball is very simple. You have a sphere, and using the standard platformer controls, you need to help it climb a maze, all while avoiding traps, and falling to its doom. Once you start playing, you realize how much precision platformer gameplay it has in it, and how well it manages to confuse you when it comes to where you need to go.

Forgotten Ball uses a unique approach to world design. It’s a gigantic construct made out of fused primitives that come together to form one heck of a maze. Getting stuck on what comes next happens quite often and at times, it even feels like you’re playing inside a geometric illusion.

At this time, Forgotten Ball is in early beta, and you can definitely feel that. The GUI is absent, which is not necessarily bad but the menus are poorly designed and if you want to find out what’s annoying, don’t press ‘Q’. Also, disregard the splash screen that has ‘splashscreen’ written on it.

Forgotten Ball really needs some patching up and improvements when it comes to user interaction. It’s kind of frustrating to not know where the checkpoint is and if you fall from somewhere up, and manage to luckily land on something, the checkpoint resets and your progress is shot.

Forgotten Ball has by all means a very good idea for a game. It’s something I, and many others would play for hours on end if it had the proper polishing. However, at this time it’s in early development and some setbacks are always expected, even in AAA titles. It’s just (slightly) unpleasant to like a game and not fully enjoy it.