Ballest of Them All

Ballest of Them All nails that “just one more run” feeling. The movement is smooth, the physics feel great once you get the hang of them, and every level is a new opportunity to shave off a few more seconds. It’s a perfect fit for speedrunners or anyone who loves racing balls or creating their own maps. On top of that, the devs are awesome!! Super engaged with the players and constantly improving the game. You can tell it’s a true passion project. Definitely one of those hidden gems that deserves more attention.

I would say that the dev is a little bit nuts. Seems to be obsessed with cheaters and trying to catch them. That being said, I cannot deny the quality of game being produced here. It certainly appeals to a certain type of player who wants to perfect every aspect of their play. There's something for everyone I would say. Whether you like to create tracks or simply play them. Give it a go - highly recommended.

A far harder and sweatier version of Trackmania... but with a ball instead of a car. The controls and physics are surprisingly NOT janky at all, especially compared to other ball-based games. If anything, they feel really intuitive, responsive, and consistent. Once you get a feel for the movement, the game becomes genuinely satisfying to play, and incredibly frustrating when you mess up. But that's the charm of it. The biggest thing I think this game needs next is a proper, active community. Dev-hosted events, community competitions, leaderboards, and eventually some kind of community-created content and challenges could give it a lot more staying power. More track variety would also go a long way (and more checkpoints PLEASE), especially tracks designed around teaching and mastering specific mechanics. Something along the lines of the Ballest of Them All School tracks would be perfect for helping players understand what the game is capable of while also giving more experienced players something to grind. This game also has great Trial and RPG-track potential (there's a Deep Dip inspired tower created by the devs) so I'd love to see more of that in the future. Add some custom assets to mapping and the possibilities are endless. For the price it's currently listed at (around €2–4) you're getting way more than your money's worth. If you enjoy Trackmania time trials or precision platforming, it's absolutely worth picking up.

So far, this feels mostly like an alpha version of a rage game for streamers, one that seems alright in marketing videos but plays quite poorly. (It *is* Early Access, to be fair.) --- The biggest issue is that controlling the ball feels unfulfilling. The physics are too buggy to encourage chasing medals, let alone good leaderboard positions. It's hard to explain why it feels so bad; everything just feels rough. It's a bit like the difference between an actually round ball and a D100. Nothing is smooth and trying to get landings right is just annoying, not to mention trying to make consistent use of ramps. Maintaining your momentum is key to good runs, but it feels luck-based more than anything - sometimes the slightest touch kills your momentum, yet sometimes bumping into things makes very little difference. Whenever you fail an attempt, you don't know what went wrong and when you succeed, you're not sure what you did right. There's no tutorial, manual or tips, and you can only access other players' ghosts *after* you've aced a track. What's the point of that? If I already got the author medal, I no longer need a reference for that level. --- I usually *like* getting to grips with physics-based games, racers, honing speedrunning techniques, looking for optimal routes etc. Yet something about Ballest just feels wrong and it doesn't spark that "Let's just try that again, shall we?" instinct.

Overall very fun game and an awesome growing community. I didn't know it was possible to ball so hard until I rolled into this game. If you're looking to test out your speedrunning skills, or if you're just in the mood for ballin, pick this one up for sure!!

Very chill game to compete with people and yourself. Definitely worth the money at least 100 hours of gameplay If you like to speedrun and improve your times. You can make your own maps now which makes this game completely worth it.

Needs more community, tracks and updates but the current gameplay is already really good and addicting so for the price of it I can definitely recommend this game! Just don't think this is a "move the world balance the ball" game, it's more like trackmania but with a ball. But I promise it's not jank, you can definitely fight for the leaderboard like trackmania or just have fun clearing tracks.

Amending my earlier review to a positive review as the lag issue is fixed with a reinstall of the game. Able to run the game at high graphics and in fullscreen again. If anything crops up, I'll direct my worries to the support page and not in a negative review next time. -- Game might have a data leak issue that eats away at GPU and progressively gets worse over time. I've noticed a perpetually increasing lag presence over the last three days of playing (which, outside of my issues, I've had a blast playing). My computer is on the older end but is insisted by the game itself to be able to run high detail and shaders, and at the start of my gameplay, was able to run other background tasks and Discord calls. The latter option I noticed as time went on began to wain in playability, as I began noticing choppiness in my frames, which renders any racing you perform ineffective as the game relies on smooth performance to record your runs. Fast forward to today, and the game feels bricked. The game is using 100% of my GPU with all of my settings at their lowest, I've had to close all of my background programs, and am now running the game in windowed mode at the lowest resolution, and still I'm receiving occasional frame freezes. All in-game levels are affected, but is especially prevalent on level 8. I'd love to continue being a part of this game's growing racing leaderboard / potential community, but am unable to find a temporary solution that has worked or an isolated reason to this game's unusual choppiness. For the game's sake, I hope this is only an isolated incident for me alone, because I truly wish the best for it.