Windows Phone Thoughts: Ballistic v1.3

Figure 2: Players experience an interesting twist when confronted with upside down levels.

Going Ballistic
As most people know, the study of ballistics involves determining the logical path of travel of an object. The game Ballistic follows this line of thought. The response of the ball bouncing off of blocks or being propelled back to the top of the screen by exploding dynamite feels realistic and responds as one would expect. The game also incorporates smoke effects, huge exploding “nuclear bombs” and homing missiles that destroy the ball and force the player to take another approach. Luckily, there is no limit to how many times each level can be retried because some of the puzzles take many attempts to complete.

On the up side, the game forces the player to think about the action and reactions what will affect the ball’s travel to the bottom, and it’s hard to put down once the game is started. On the down side, after the player has figured out the trick to completing each level, then it gets considerably easier and is far less interesting. For that reason, it lacks the play value of open-ended games that involve attaining a high score such as Bejeweled or many of the Gamebox games.