Speed Ball

Platformers are usually designed to be challenging, because gamers like to feel like their skills are important in the grand scheme of things. Thus, the action is that much more engaging if you are having a tough time getting over traps or fighting enemies, which is why hardcore platformers tend to have a big following in the world of video games.

Speed Ball is an arcade platformer in which you have to roll a ball around on tricky terrain and reach the checkpoint without falling off the narrow platforms. There’s nothing more to it than just that, but that doesn’t mean you cannot have a lot of fun with it. There are plenty of levels to try out, and they are all pretty tough to complete if you are new to the genre.

On the other hand, they are not that difficult if you know your play around platformers, because it each level should take you only a few seconds to complete. No new mechanics are added along the way, which means that your only possibilities are to move or to jump. Because of this, the levels remain rather boring, which is a bit of a bummer.

As mentioned before, you can only move around and jump, which is achieved with the minimum number of buttons possible. Although this makes it easy for everyone to learn the basics, you can consider the mechanics mastered after only a few minutes, because there’s nothing else to learn along the way. Naturally, platformers have to constantly change things around to keep the players invested.

The graphics are not very special either, since there’s nothing to look at, except for the platformers and the ball itself. It would have been nice to have some sort of background, or at least a rough landscape to keep your eyes busy. Even if the lack of scenery helps you focus on the gameplay, it’s still not a good enough excuse, especially not when the difficulty level is so low.

In the end, Speed Ball does not look and play like a complete game, because it lacks too many elements at the moment. However, it can certainly be improved later on, even if the concepts are nothing new in the genre.