Fugdale’s Funhouse

Object: Rotate the course to get the ball to reach its goal.

Review: This game of skill presents you with 24 progressively more difficult obstacle courses to work your way through. You must move your ball through each course by turning the entire course clockwise or counter-clockwise. Gravity pulls the ball downward on the screen and propels your ball onward. Watch out for menacing spikes, flames and other obstacles which line the walls of most courses.

The game does a great job of giving you pointers on how to advance past certain types of obstacles and the first 10 courses will move along pretty nicely, but then things get increasingly more difficult and this game may have you pulling your hair out. It even warns that it won’t be responsible for manaical homicidal tendancies resulting from frustration. I imagine that the game won’t have you actually killing people, but it does present quite a challenge. Luckily it will save your progress automatically, so you can come back when you have cooled down a bit.

The mechanics of the game feels smooth and responsive and the challenges seem surmountable eventually, but I dare say most players won’t be able to reach the end in one sitting. This game has similar physics to games such as Wone and Everybody Panic both reviewed previously on this blog.

I just love these physics-based obstacle course games and I hope to see more versions on the theme in the future. For now, this game will give you plenty of game-playing pleasure and will turn your world upside down.

Object: Guide the ball from start to end through a course of angled mirrors. Collect all coins along the way.

Review: This inventive puzzler looks similar to multitudes of other puzzle games out there, such as Orbox B or Cubeoban. The difference in this is that you aren’t simply pushing a cube around, but have a ball that bounces off of cleverly placed angled mirrors. The ball starts on the square marked with an ‘S’ and you must maneuver the mirrors so that the ball bounces through the course and collects all the blue coins and then exits the course on the square marked with an ‘E’. On most courses you can start the ball bouncing around and then manipulate the mirrors to guide it where you want to go. However, some levels require you to map out the course in advance because once the ball starts all mirrors get frozen in place.

Each mirror rotates in one of two settings and you can change the angle right before or after the ball hits it to get it to go in a new direction. Some silver colored mirrors are permanently fixed in place. However, each level features unique ways of utilizing the fixed mirrors. In some levels, the silver mirrors stay put altogether. In other levels, a button my auto rotate all the fixed mirrors or they might just rotate on their own at random intervals. To add to the puzzling mix, you will sometimes have other obstacles, such as blocks that move in certain directions when the ball hits them. Each level has a seemingly different strategy involved in solving it.

This puzzler features progressively more difficult levels and each level comes with a passcode so you don’t have to start over next time you play. I found the first 8 or 9 levels pretty easy to get through and then things get a little tougher. The game mechanics feel smooth and responsive and the puzzles aren’t so tough or frustrating that you will give up right away. In fact, they sort of make you want to keep going. Because the courses are contained with boundaries, you don’t have to worry about flying off the edge of the course or ‘dying’. The ball will sometimes get stuck in a holding pattern, but on most levels you can just keep flipping mirrors until you get the ball where you want it to go. On those few courses where your ball gets stuck in a permanent loop, you can always start over by clicking on the start square. This will reset the course to it’s original position.

These five ball and paddle games each give their own unique flair to the genre. Some are more difficult than others, but all of them have good replay value and are fun to play.

In this fun skill test you simply click on the soccer ball and it will fly towards the wall at the end of the room. Hit the white rectangle on the wall as many times as you can in the time allowed. To increase your time, click on the random number bubbles that appear every once in a while. Try to get as high a score as you can.

In this game you control a purple sponge with eyes and bounce your ball around the course. There are floating bananas which send your ball in different directions like pinball. If you hit the green thingy, you get another ball added. If you hit the red thingy, you will be able to shoot pretzels. Different things happen depending on what you hit. You only get one life and you get 10 points for every second you stay alive, with an extra 10 points per second added for each ball in play.

The higher your score when you die, the better your rank will be in the end. Ranks are the funny part of the game. If you die right away, you will be ranked with a pile of poo or a butt. I worked my way up to “Susan” in a few minutes. But, since you only get one life, this game usually quickly comes to an abrupt end, just when it starts getting fun. The fact that your cursor remains visible is a slight annoyance. Also, when you get to fire pretzels, you can’t just hit the spacebar like in some games. You must click your sponge paddle directly, which almost always causes me to lose track of the ball and die.

How many balls can you juggle at once? In this game you must bounce the falling juggle balls off of your paddle. But you must draw your paddle in the air each time you use it. Click and drag to draw a straight blue line. The line can be flat or can tilt at an angle and you can draw it any length you want. But the shorter the line, the higher your ball will bounce. The lines only stay visible for a few moments, so you have to draw them when your ball is close enough to make contact.

Use your ball to collect stars in the sky and you can also touch question marks which add additional balls to the field. This is where the juggling aspect comes in. I really like the way you draw your paddle in this game. It combines elements of a good drawing game with a traditional ball and paddle game.

In this interesting game from Gas Games your ball is inside a shape. Starting with a 5-sided shape, the amount of sides grows as the game continues. On one side of the shape there is a thick line, you must maneuver your ball so that it hits the thick line. When you do, another thick line will move into place another wall of the shape. Keep hitting the thick lines as they move inward. Each time you hit a line your time meter increases a little bit. But watch out, if it gets to the bottom before you finish the level, you will die.

The game is fun for a while, but the controls have a definite drag to them, which makes moving the ball somewhat muddy. In later levels the perimeter shape will turn slowly making it harder to hit the appropriate side of the shape. And as I said before, the number of sides will increase as the game progresses.

This is your more traditional ball and paddle game, but it is very colorful and fully realized. Each level displays a bunch of multi-colored bricks, which you must smash with your ball and paddle. As in games like Arkanoid, special items will emerge from broken bricks which give you special powers. The items are broken into two categories. ‘Ball items’ give you extra points or change your ball in some way. These remain floating where the brick once was and you must hit them again with your ball before they disappear. ‘Paddle items’ give your paddle special powers like size increases or firepower. These items will fall from the bricks and you must catch them with your paddle to activate them.

Some special items aren’t very helpful and others will automatically blow up big chunks of bricks or catapult you into the next level. You get three lives, but they go quickly. Luckily the game provides you with a password each time you start a new level. The paddle itself has two bumpers on the sides which will dramatically increase the speed of your ball. I found the angles that the ball bounces off your paddle to be unpredictable. In other words, it won’t always go the direction you think it should. Again, your cursor arrow remains visible during play, which distracts from focusing on the paddle itself. But this is a minor annoyance for an otherwise nicely constructed game.

If you enjoy Ball and Paddle games, check out these previous posts:

7 Ball and Paddle Games You Won’t Want To Miss
Mmeoww - Game Review
Magic Ball Bounce 2 - Cool Ball/Paddle Game

And as always, you can find all games reviewed on this site in the All Games Section.