Ballance

◾◾🔷◾◾ [0] Ups and downs [i]Just as good - and just as frustrating, as it was two decades ago[/i] You know why you are here. You have played this game long time ago, probably as a kid, then randomly out of nowhere remembered it again and went to check if it's available anywhere - and then found it on Steam. If it's not your story, I'm slightly surprised. It's a simple concept, you control a ball that can be made of wood (good, well, balance between power and maneverability), stone (can push anything, struggles to go uphill and do anything that requires any sort of precision) or paper (is too light to do anything, but can fly upwards on air flows and is so easy to maneuever it can be a disadvantage) across twelve levels of "marble run" track puzzle platforming (more platforming than puzzle, honestly), focused around mantaining, well, balance and not falling from the platforms into the void - which is much more difficult thing than it sounds. You want to know, if this twenty year old game holds up. And I would say it does in some ways, but it is a bit of a YMMV situation. On one hand, game [i]feels[/i] great. Stone ball feels weighty, paper ball feels light, sound design is amazing, a ball riding between metal rails sounds like it is supposed to sound. I played on Steam Deck, and it even had a bit of a rumble going on, and it feels [i]correct[/i]. Music is a bit weird tho - it's just some weird slightly repetative short tracks in random spots, while staying quiet otherwise, but it creates an atmosphere. And on another game, damn this game is frustrating to play. The ball can get out of balance when you're just holding a direction (and most of the time you do need to hold a key/D-pad, because the game was obviously designed for this in mind and not an analog stick which makes movement even less predictable), and there will be so many times when you just can't handle the stone ball and it just falls off the platform. And then there's some levels that require ridiculous things from you - such as navigating stone ball through wavy terrain, when losing enough momentum means that you can't climb the next wave and fall off the platform. And that would be frustrating enough on it's own, but the game has life system. You start with three, sometimes you can get Life Ups, you lose one each time you fall. And if you run out of lives, you can only restart the level. So eventually, I just gave up. I have no idea how did I not go insane playing this as a kid, because I remember completing the game back then. But now - I like the game, it feels really nice, but I have less frustrating games to play in my backlog after getting enough playtime to satisfy my nostalgia. I leave the thumbs up, because the game [i]is[/i] good, just not for me anymore. I won't beat level 8, and it is alright.