I was reading an article the other day on the technological trends for mobile applications in 2015. One of it was the use of frameworks such as Unity to create better games instead of building them from scratch… which I agree since time wasted on building all the ancillary stuff can be better used to improve the quality of the game that one would be building.
In any case, one indie game served as a case-study on why frameworks like Unity help not only to improve time-to-market but also provide features that would be unthinkable several years ago. Ball King by Qwiboo is a casual arcade game whereby players control a basketball player in all his 2D pixelated glory trying to launch all kinds of stuff through a basket in order to get a high score. Now, the placement of the basket varies in height, so this makes precision key, and not only that, there’s wind to contend with.
All the action happens very smoothly on screen (I suspect a high FPS count), and certain rim-shots get the camera close-up treatment which is a very, very nice touch…what’s more impressive is that this happens in real-time. The background on the level I’m playing on is actually well animated. Remember when I said that the objective is to get all kinds of stuff into the basket? Well, Ball King doesn’t leave players to contend with the initial basketball.
Stuff can be unlocked by playing the game, and this includes pizzas, 3.5 inch floppy disks, nuts, mushrooms…..all of them are on display on the Start Screen actually. What’s more impressive about Ball King is the implementation of Unity’s EveryPlay function, allowing the game to record your plays and put it up on YouTube, this is a feature very relevant in the age of Twitch, and one that would have developers spinning around in circles to implement years ago. So hooray for frameworks!
To further add to that whole social experience, there’s the GameCenter leaderboard built into the game. I still struggle to understand how folks can top the charts with more than 600 points while I have a measly 8. Ball King is TOUGH.
Having said all that, Ball King doesn’t bear the hallmark failure points typical of indie games (poorly made, lousy gameplay) but instead boasts excellent (not to mention super addictive/commute friendly) gameplay and really great 2D pixel graphics. Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Ball King at a 5 out of 5. Ball King is available for FREE on the iTunes App Store for iOS devices, and as well as the Google Play Store for Android devices.
