I originally purchased this game when it was available via Alawar around 17 years ago, and have purchased it a second time when its expansions were added to the game, with a name change to Action Ball Deluxe. When the developer released his sequel Action Ball 2, that was originally released a few years after this game, then a few years ago here on Steam, he offered to release this game on steam as well if he got 100 likes. That didn't happen, but I'm so pleased to see that he did finally release it on Steam.
It's still one of my favourite 3D breakouts because it's more difficult to beat that most other 3D breakouts, apart from maybe Caromble and Incrediball: The Seven Sapphires. It's not particularly difficult if you know what each of the power ups do and the various antics the robots perform. When I played this version I noted that there were at least a couple of changes that I don't recall being in the original release, for example there's a Kamikaze robot, that dive bombs your bat in all levels (you can tell when it's about to dive bomb if you keep an eye on the animation), whereas in the original game you only saw these in the boss levels (I may be wrong about this; so, will have to reinstall my original to confirm this) and another robot that has been added changes your ball to something negative, and another robot when destroyed sends a homing rocket to destroy other robots if present in the arena, otherwise all the other robots remain the same as in the original. It's useful to destroy all or most of the robots because for every 15 you destroy; you get an extra life.
Judging by the changes made to the original, you'll need them initially; especially if Breakouts are not your usual fare. Thankfully, for beginners, there are three different difficulty modes. Until I got used to the new additions, I lost all my lives twice (playing on medium difficulty) before even finishing the second level (which is unusual for me as I've played the original for hundreds of hours over the years, I've had it). It took me almost 40 minutes of game play to get into the swing of things and survive past the first boss robot, that appears at level 5. In the original, which I only played a few months ago, I was always able to progress far into the game without losing many lives, and usually accumulated tens of lives though destroying robots and picking up the occasional life power up.
Some of the things I really like about this game apart from its reasonable difficulty (at least compared to most other 3D breakouts) is the colourful graphic, and the way the bricks melt away when you hit them. That said I do have a few minor gripes, for example there's a lack of really acute rebound angles from the bat, that both Action Ball and Action Ball 2 suffer from (though Action Ball 2 is compensated slightly because of its odd shaped arena's). Unfortunately, this does take away some of the ability to control the ball with your bat as effectively as in some other breakouts that I have; e.g. Ricochet Infinity (that was sadly removed from Steam several years ago). That said, the lack of acute angle shots and even curved shots (created by slicing the ball as it hits the ship/bat in some breakouts) is only a minor gripe and takes nothing away from the actual game play. Generally, the ball physics are good.
The games level map is packaged into level sets; each set containing 10 levels; if you lose all of your lives in the first level set before you complete the set, when you restart, you'll have to start from the beginning of that level set. However, once past the first level set, progress is saved to the end of each level set; for example, if you lose all your lives in the third set, you don't have to restart from the first level set. However, if you decide to skip the unlocked level sets and start a new game from the level set you left, you're likely to score fewer points to go on the high score table.
This restart mechanic from the beginning of a level set is only significant if you lose all your lives before ending the level set. You can always replay previous level sets once unlocked at any time, but as yet I'm not sure if they overwrite your save file and negate progress you've previously made (I'll be checking this once I've completed every level in the original set of 100 levels and will update if necessary).
Each level set ends with a boss battle, apart from the first set that also has a single boss robot at level five.
The game has several different brick types; some dissolve on first hit, others take multiple hits, some explode on contact and others transport your ball to a different spot on the arena, or cause the ball to veer off in a different direction; others send bombs down to destroy your ship (you can see the bombs inside the brick, so you do have some warning with these). There are also lots of different power ups (28 in total), that are a mix of positive and negative types; for example a triple ball (if you get multiple triple ball power ups, every ball on the arena will multiply, not just the last ball in play (like some breakouts); there's also a rocket launcher, terminator, enlarge pad, rail ball, neutralise, machine gun, etc; some remain until lost, others are timed, or in the case of weapons, limited by the amount of ammunition they carry. Picking up two of the same power ups before the first is used, (which always occurs in the boss battles, where you get lots of homing missile and machine gun power ups) are, unfortunately, not cumulative. Sadly, power ups are not carried forwards to the next level either. You can see all the brick types and power ups via the games main menu's help section.
Overall, Action Ball is a decent breakout, that is well worth adding to your breakout collection and it's being sold at a very fair price. (especially compared to what I originally paid $19.99 for the original game back in 2005 and $14.99 for its first expansion pack totalling $34.98 and never regretted paying so much (pre-2008, all arcade games cost $19.99 with expansions usually costing $14.99).
[b]To be updated:[/b]
This is just my initial impression of the game play of this updated version for the first time. I may discover other things as I progress. I would still have loved to have seen a level editor that would have added an extra dimension to this game. Community made levels could have been uploaded to the Steam workshop to share with the Action Ball community; much like you could with most of the Ricochet games apart from the first.
By the way, if you have any of the last three or four Ricochet games (2D breakout) there's a dedicated site that hosts many of the better fan made levels (we are talking thousands of levels). I've posted details elsewhere [url=https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/467708][b]HERE[/b][/url], If you don't have any of the games (Ricochet Infinity {2007}, Ricochet {2001}, Ricochet: Lost Worlds {2004} and Ricochet: Lost Worlds: Recharged {2004}} you can now get them free via some abandonware sites, which I suspect I'm not allowed to post links to here, but you can easily Google them. Please note that abandonware is still a grey area legally.
Still, the number of levels you get with Action Ball should keep you entertained for many days, weeks or even months. :)
p.s.
To the developers, will you be fixing the online high score table so that you can compare your score with other Steam users? A good idea would be to include the option of comparing scores in your friends list. Also, in one of the news threads, you mentioned that you would be releasing some helpful videos; one of then mentioned how to use the level editor. Does this mean you are going to release a level editor? This would be brilliant and would be even better if it was linked to the Steam workshop so that we could share custom levels.
