Factory Balls is a puzzle game on the web created by Bart Bonte in which the objective is to use the objects and paint colors provided to you to produce a desired paint pattern displayed on the screen.
This puzzle game requires the unusual use of objects, in that the objects you are supplied with to create the paint pattern are regular items that are otherwise irrelevant to painting, such as a leather belt, goggles, or a construction hat. It is a sort of sequence puzzle / preparing the way puzzle, as discussed in “Designing the Puzzle” by Bob Bates, in that the objects must be used in a very specific sequence in order to produce the desired output. Players can use trial and error, overwriting previous moves, until they’ve figured out what the correct sequence is.
The necessary steps are very well-clued to the player, however, since the game only supplies you with what you will need for each round. The levels get more and more difficult as you progress as well, so the barrier of entry is low but players are able to learn how to solve later rounds by building intuition from the earlier rounds. The fact that the earlier rounds were easier made the game very riveting to me when I first started playing, because the objective patterns looked very straightforward and even if I did something wrong, I could derive an “Aha!” moment and realize quickly what I needed to do differently.
I appreciated the logical progression of the game in line with its nature as a sequence puzzle. Though unusual, the use of the objects began to make more and more sense to me and became easier to intuit as I went. This made the objective feel very tangible and within-reach, even if the level took me many tries. The overall quickness of each round also contributed to it remaining engaging after several rounds.
One criticism I would give is that the setup of the game does not provide strong feedback that encourages me to keep going after playing a few levels. If there were signals such as points awarded for every round or prizes after every 10 rounds, I would be much more interested in continuing playing. To me, it felt like the full experience of the game was revealed to me after playing less than 5 rounds, so there was not much of an incentive to keep going.
