For this critical play, I enjoyed the free 25 level demo of Bart Bonte’s Factory Balls Forever to completion. Originally released named Factory Balls as a flash game, Factory Balls Forever is a re-release by its original creator with new levels and a lifetime past the adobe flash player, available fully on steam, itch.io, kartridge, or any mobile app store. This game is generally a pickup and play game for anyone, but it is likely to be enjoyed more by people who want quick puzzles that, while they generally build upon their mechanics, are entirely disconnected and are great for small sessions when you need to kill time. However, as the game has a fairly basic interface with nothing in between levels, I would argue that it doesn’t have a narrative and rather lets the puzzles form the game.
To start, let’s cover how much I enjoyed the core gameplay loop of experimenting with new tools to solve harder levels. As levels went on, new items were introduced at a pace that felt perfect for me, where I would master one item and get introduced to the next right before I got bored. I would finish a level thinking I had my strategy down, but then I’d get thrown a curveball in seeds and watering, where you have to experiment to discover new mechanics, then develop your strategy, then do the whole thing over as new mechanics are introduced. The mechanic of different items forcing you to layer masks before using paint and painting in certain orders led to the dynamic of difficulty through limitation, which ultimately resulted in the core aesthetic of challenge. This game was great at one thing, and that was pushing your brain to solve puzzles without much to distract you. I would argue that focusing in on one specific thing, in this case just puzzles, can result in a great game that, while it isn’t for everyone, is a great experience for those who are interested in that one thing. Overall, I would say the core puzzle experience is top tier and definitely can give you a good challenge with some complex patterns, but when you look past the puzzles, you get, well, a white background and some blue circles.
That’s the thing, if you’re looking for beautiful art or a story or really characters at all, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The game outside of these puzzles is the start screen and a level select screen. That’s it. Which, no offense that’s all I need to have fun, doesn’t evoke a narrative. You could argue that the different choices of items and the carboard box form some details to form an underlying story, and while there may be some traces of a narrative because of that, such as the existence of belts, hardhats, and the name forming a factory setting, they aren’t central or of that much significance. You simply are given the image to work to and some items to form it. However, even though the art can seem basic, it does combine with the animation and sound design to form a very satisfying interactive experience, which follows Scott Kim’s idea of making a fun toy as the base of a puzzle, where the puzzle is fun to interact with even while not making progress.
Two areas I think the puzzle side could improve though are colorblindness support and repetitiveness when you fail. While the game is incredible at not making assumptions of what the player knows, generally letting the player experiment to learn and not requiring starting knowledge, the game is incredibly color dependent with no way to introduce an alternative version to make it colorblind accessible, which could be fixed by using small repeating patters alongside colors, like squares or triangles, to make it more accessible. The other thing is that when you mess up or experiment towards the end of a more complex level, you have to redo all of your steps up to that point to react to the failure, which could get incredibly frustrating, but easily fixed by an undo button, though I understand the difficulty of balancing game’s difficulty.
The core interactivity of Factory Balls Forever is fun on its own and the goals formed are clear and lead you in a fun direction. Even if it doesn’t have a story or any innovative technology, I am considering picking this up on steam to enjoy over 200 puzzles more, and while that’s most likely just a me thing with how much I love logic puzzles, it does say something about the game. Ultimately Factory Balls Forever is a fun experience that’s well worth a quick try on a web browser to see if this sub genre of puzzle focused games is for you.
