Sketch Ball review (iPod/iPhone)

♫ “So I flex the real in the artist sketch, I paint it true, I paint it true”

10 word description: Line-drawing puzzle game. Direct bouncing ball with lines.

You have to deflect the bouncing ball towards the chequered flag.

10 word review: Gameplay falls slightly short of the promise of the graphics.

The ball must not hit anything else on the way to the flag.

You will like this if you enjoy: Line drawing, ball-physics, puzzle games.

The good news: The presentation and art style is attractive, clear and consistent. The concept is different enough to definitely warrant a look.

'Destroy' mode, aka - draw an umbrella around the target.

The bad news: (It might just be my brain doesn’t work this way, but…) I found puzzle mode quite frustrating and resigned on level 8. I found destroy mode way too easy. 

Arcadelife verdict: The problem I’ve got here is I can see how this game is meant to work, and I like the concept. I can also see that a lot of time and care has been put into the graphics and overall presentation. Even drawing the lines works well, they end up pretty much where you want them to be and there’s an erase function, etc. It’s just … I kept getting the ball stuck in a terminal ping-pong loop, or wedged behind an inadequately drawn line, or I just kept failing the same puzzle over and over because I’m rubbish at this game. 

No smirking pineapple can withstand my badly drawn umbrella line attack!

That was puzzle mode. So I gave up on that and tried ‘Destroy’ mode. Again, it’s a good idea but there’s one slight problem. If you draw a kind of umbrella line over the target, it gets destroyed very quickly. And you can do that same thing over and over again, at least up to level 10, at which point I stopped because I wasn’t really doing anything. Just drawing a random line and watching the ball bounce around until it wiped the last pixel off the screen.

No, honestly, I really don't.

Overall, I’d say the gameplay needs a bit of work. Puzzle mode is rather frustrating and Destroy mode lacks any kind of challenge, which is desperately needed in a game because that is what holds the interest of the player, not just watching a ball bounce around the screen. It looks really nice and just needs some attention to the way the game elements hang together.

Arcadelife rating: 60/100

The version of this game that Arcadelife reviewed is 1.0

Gamers Rejoice website link

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
4th gen iPod Touch (OS 4.3.1)