Posted by Ryan Johnson on 03 30, 2010

Bernoulli Ball

Categories: Games, | 0 comments | |

Bernoulli Ball by Clever Martian can best be described as a curiously addictive and futuristic twist to traditional pinball games. The main differences are that you use your finger to redirect balls instead of paddles, and instead of fixed bumpers bouncing your ball all over the place you’ve got to deal with a variety of both fixed and moving obstacles (windmills, bouncing balls, gusts of wind, etc.). Just like pinball there’s no limit to how long you can play and the underlying goal is to wrack up the highest score possible. You can send as many as 5 balls screaming down the drain before your game is over.

Bernoulli Ball consists of four mini games (soon to be 12): Chute Me, The Factory, Rollin Ramps, and Ratchet Run. Each mini game is more or less cut from the same cloth, meaning they all require you to safely navigate balls around a variety of obstacles and into a chute. Each mini game presents a slightly different challenge from the next. The shape of the level and the obstacles involved all vary. Some levels have windmills, others have rotating platforms, some have gusts of wind, some have a mix of each, and all have vicious bouncing balls that fly onto the screen, ricochet mindlessly all over the place, and send your balls headed on the fast track toward the drain. One things for sure, this game is designed for multitaskers.

The longer you last the trickier the game gets. You have to navigate as many as 5 balls all at once toward the chute while at the same time constantly defending their position against all of the obstacles that the level has to throw at you. Amidst all of this you’re focused on achieving the highest score possible and one way to pad your score is to get the balls into the chute in perfect order. So let’s just think about this for a second. You’ve got to juggle as many as 5 balls at once, with multiple disruptive obstacles trying to send your balls down the drain, while also trying to keep track of what order their in, and trying to sneak them by an opening and closing roadblock to get them to the promised land. Let’s just say Bernoulli Ball can be a little intense at times.

Overall I found Bernoulli Ball to be a well put together game. It’s got nice game-play, a user friendly interface, decent graphics, and perfect sounds. Some levels I found to be much easier than others. I’m interested to see what the 8 new levels will bring to the game. The only knock I have against this game is that at first I was really drawn into it and played it over and over, but once I got the hang of it the game became somewhat monotonous. For example, I got into a streak on Rollin Ramps where I played for 20 consecutive minutes and elected to quit the game because I felt like I could go on for ever and ever. I’d like to see the difficulty ramped up a bit, but maybe that’s already being tackled in the new soon to be released levels. That being said, Bernoulli Ball is definitely an interesting game and worth checking out. It’s well worth the $0.99 price point and also offers a free Bernoulli Ball Lite version if you’d like to try it before you buy it.

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