This Is Not A Ball Game. Review

This Is Not A Ball Game. certainly comes out swinging with an oddball title, a reference to a famous painting. The artistic influence continues with the early-1900s French circus theme, complete with French woman narrator which serves as the character that the player is trying to free by rolling balls at targets? Like art, this game doesn't have to make sense as to why it works the way it does. But hitting all three star blocks by rolling balls at them is the ultimate goal here among increasingly-complicated levels, with plenty of physics-based traps added along the way.

The theme definitely stands out - I struggle to think of many other games that are so chock-full of art references. The swiping controls work well enough, but the trail that shows where the last swipe was is a tremendous help for making small adjustments, while still requiring skill and manual dexterity to actually do so.

The game is free-to-play, with coins and tickets that can be spent. Tickets are mostly used for unlocks and for buying expensive balls. Coins need to be managed carefully, as the basic ball has to be bought with coins as well. When the player runs out of coins, the game makes a target practice mode available to grind for coins. It would help of this mode was available from the start, or able to be repeated. I imagine people who spend money on coins will want to do it for the expensive powerup balls, rather than refilling the default ones. This system feels like it could just work a lot better.

As well, the game needs that final level of polish. It starts with an intro video that can only be skipped by pinching it. The interface seems needlessly confusing. The energy mechanic that gets introduced seems unnecessary, what with the coins being limited enough as it is. These hopefully will all be tweaked in the near future.

While there's a lot that is intriguing about This Is Not A Ball Game. it is ultimately laxking. whoch is a shame because so few games have this kind of promising artistic concept.