Looking slightly menacing!
A puzzler that is more than just a load of old balls.
Yesterday Nintendo of Europe released lots of info about the upcoming Wiiware / DSiWare lineup. Among those games was a title called Spaceball: Revolution by Virtual Toys, the Spanish developer who brought Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam to WiiWare a short while ago.
Keen to know more we got in touch and were given the following press release, along with some screenshots and game trailer:
Fifteen devilishly challenging levels will test the player in making near-impossible patterns, with the help of space energy balls. Time and trajectory-blocking obstacles will become the player’s nemesis, testing their ability, dexterity and concentration to new limits.
The goal is to finish the different levels of the game, copying the shapes that are shown at the back of the screen. In order to copy the shown image, energy balls thrown by the Wii Remote™, will activate or deactivate squares of the grid upon contact.
Time is crucial, and that’s proven in this Virtual Toys’ game, because the player has a limited time to achieve each shape. After each successful shape, a new pattern is generated, making the challenge even more difficult.
Throughout the fifteen levels of the game, new obstacles appear. These include cubes, hoops, laser rays, asteroids, cylinders, pendulums and balls! Each obstacle has unique properties including static, mobile, invisible, destroyable and indestructible. The player has to remember every behavior pattern to evade the obstacles on each throw, ensuring there is maximum time to replicate each shape!
The challenge for the player is relentless and they can choose to play the game in two ways: challenge mode, with four different difficulty levels (‘easy’ to ‘expert’) or multiplayer mode, where two intrepid players challenge each other in a split-screen sabotaging frenzy!
As if the obstacles and enemies are not challenging enough, many “special effects” will make your journey to the end of the game even more difficult, with sudden spins of the world, auto-balls and cosmic cameras all out to disrupt the player’s aim!
Below in our gallery you can see 18 screenshots from the game, and for your audiovisual delight here is the game trailer:
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As always, have your say in the comments area. Will this be a day one purchase for you?
1. zane
08 Apr 2009, 10:46 BST
looks innovative for once, yeeeehaaa!
2. calculon
08 Apr 2009, 10:56 BST
Looks like another Plattchen to me - which mightl be a good thing to some people. Not me though.
Also, if the shapes are 'impossible' how the hell would you create them? The more I read this article the more I think 'Plattchen' and fear for the worst.
3. xesbeth
08 Apr 2009, 11:45 BST
Do.Not.Want.
4. Starwolf_UK
08 Apr 2009, 12:54 BST
As always, have your say in the comments area. Will this be a day one purchase for you?
Hardly any WiiWare is a day 1 purchase for me. This is no exception. Especilly given it looks so much like Quizzlesti...I mean Platchen Twist n' Pain as said before. As calculon said the press release sounds like a clone of that (the whole while avoiding enemy defences...kind of like the stuff you had to shoot down in Pattchen).
5. XCWarrior
08 Apr 2009, 13:30 BST
@Blaze I love puzzle games, but I'm with you on this one. We need more genres. I really thought WiiWare would be where we would start seeing more platform games again, but that hasn't been the case.
6. LEGEND MARIOID
08 Apr 2009, 13:52 BST
IF it works, it could be good. I don't think the description of the game has done it any favours.
7. QuarterRoy00
08 Apr 2009, 14:02 BST
Oohhhh....shiny!
I also think they need a difficulty called "Ludicrous Speed"
8. Dazza
08 Apr 2009, 14:29 BST
We've added the game trailer now. Perhaps this might help to change some people's minds?
9. Ren
08 Apr 2009, 14:40 BST
wow, looks very nice from the trailer. has a little bit of an arcade "block out" feel to it, and mulitplayer seems fun. cool interface, too, lets just pray that the controls aren't really stupid.
10. Atlantis1982
08 Apr 2009, 14:52 BST
The schwartz is not with this one.
11. Sean Aaron
08 Apr 2009, 15:37 BST
Yeah, Ren, I was totally getting Block Out (Technos) flashbacks. Really nice polished look to the game; the mechanic looks good as well.
Sure it's another puzzler, but if it's got a good soundtrack and compelling core game mechanic I'm all for it.
12. Karenina
08 Apr 2009, 15:53 BST
Great. I like it.
13. nintendo87
08 Apr 2009, 16:21 BST
Looks good!!
14. NikeXTC
08 Apr 2009, 17:39 BST
Whoa, it looks interesting! If the rythm of the game is balanced well, it could turn out as an excellent puzzler!
15. Reinosa Libre
08 Apr 2009, 18:43 BST
It´s a very original. Looks good.
16. Starwolf_UK
08 Apr 2009, 19:32 BST
In video it looks a lot better. Can't help but get a Weltris* vibe from it (probably the perspective is played from).
*-Early 90s when Tetris related things were all the rage. We had Hatris about arranging hats and Weltris being a sort of 3D Tetris.
17. LegendofPasta99
08 Apr 2009, 20:09 BST
The description left me confused, but the trailer looked good. They seem to do a lot of fun stuff with this concept. Looks a LOT better than Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam.
18. Lode Runner
08 Apr 2009, 21:17 BST
Well for one thing the game does look colorful I'll give it that. But it does sound REALLY HARD! But who knows it could be fun.
19. calculon
08 Apr 2009, 22:36 BST
It looks ok from the trailer - fairly shallow actually - but with all those obstacles in the way I'm still going on the Plattchen vibe. Having been burnt by Plattchen I wont be buying this and I can only pray that this game's zoom in/out function isn't performed by moving the Wiimote forward/backward.
As for the visuals - sure they're pretty, but pretty graphics do not a good game make (as is so evident from High Voltage's WiiWare efforts)
20. LEGEND MARIOID
09 Apr 2009, 16:08 BST
Looks more interesting from the trailer.
21. Crazed
09 Apr 2009, 22:50 BST
I basically agree with Ren and Sean Aaron. If the controls aren't stupid and the review is good, then I'll consider it. Even though it's a puzzler, the puzzle genre has been quite successful as of late, and the core graphics/sound looks good. Unless this turns out to be one of Yogurt's merchandising plans, I'll keep a little interest in this.
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