For this critical play, I revisited Factory Balls, a nostalgic online puzzle game by Bart Bonte that I remember briefly playing in the past as a kid. Playing it again was incredibly fun and surprisingly challenging. The game targets players starting around age 8 and up, with intuitive controls and initial levels that ease players into the mechanics and goals. However, the difficulty ramps up quickly, making it a stimulating challenge even for adults.
The argument: Easier initial levels draw the player in and provide them with a baseline level of commitment, which makes players more tolerant of later, higher levels of difficulty.
When I played the game, I noticed that easier initial levels draw the player in and provide them with a baseline level of commitment. In the later stages, it got harder and took me longer, but I was committed. If I had been presented with high difficulty from the beginning, I wouldn’t have stuck around when it got harder. The earlier stages allowed me to build confidence. This approach is similar to the tutorial section discussed by our guest speaker during her lecture. This made me realize that tutorial sections are vitally important. The metaphor I would use to compare playing games with is kind of like a conversation with a stranger ––or build a relationship for that matter. We have to ease the player in, just like how we have to ease a stranger into a conversation. We can’t just start asking someone who we aren’t familiar with very personal questions as that may be a huge commitment. In the same vein, if we ask a game player to commit to an extremely challenging task from the very beginning they may feel uncomfortable and quit.
Mechanics of the Game
The game’s main mechanics revolve around action buttons that allow players to manipulate the blank ball, each providing a unique effect to paint the ball a certain way. Here are the mechanics I encountered in the levels I played:
- Colors: Apply the displayed color to the visible surface of the ball.
- Cover Items: Items that can cover parts of the ball’s surface, such as construction hats that cover the top half, belts of various widths and angles, glasses, eye masks, woolen caps, and vertical hemispherical lids.
- Texture changers: Include grass and flower seeds that can be sprinkled on the visible surface. These seeds grow to the next level when watered, with each growth stage displaying a different texture.
- Tools: Include a scraper to remove color from the visible area and a recycling bin to reset the ball to its original state.
Additionally, players can click on the ball to remove the topmost object if there is one.
Types of Fun
The game integrates Challenge and Submission forms of enjoyment by offering players progressively difficult puzzles that demand logical reasoning and systematic strategies. Each level stands as a distinct puzzle that becomes more complex, necessitating a more elaborate sequence of actions to complete. As the levels advance, they take longer to solve, often requiring the player to disengage mentally and perform a series of repetitive actions, which caters to the submission aspect of the experience.
Critiques
- Unclear Onboarding Process: The onboarding process is the game’s biggest flaw. There are no explanatory texts, only images, which, although visually appealing and somewhat intuitive, don’t convey the puzzle’s objective. I felt confused initially about what I was supposed to do until I made a lucky guess.
- Solution: Introducing an instruction manual or a quick guide video at the beginning could significantly improve the onboarding experience.
- Repetitive Gameplay: While the game starts off engaging, it can quickly become monotonous as the difficulty plateaus, even with new elements like grass and flowers. Introducing new factors like for instance adding multiple balls might add some complexity, but it also risks becoming repetitive just as fast.
- Solution: Adding a player versus player mode, where players compete to solve puzzles the fastest, could enhance replayability and keep the game more exciting.
