Neverball

Reviewed by: DeathDude

Positive Points: Interesting gameplay
Music is alright
Mini golf mode

Negative Points: Camera has to be moved manually

Genre: Arcade

Size: 14 849 KB

Requirements: Windows 2000, XP, Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX. Open GL required.

Questionable Content: None

Editor rating: 4.3

Homepage: http://icculus.org/neverball/

Download location: http://icculus.org/neverball/

If your looking for a new sort of challenge, for your gaming skills, you have found that game right here. Neverball is the name, and if you have ever played the Super Monkey Ball series, then you will understand the challenge and difficulty that you will be experiencing in this game. The object of this game is to tilt the floor of each area, to move the silver ball through a wide variety of obstacles and different courses. With seventy-five levels to play through, it will take you quite a while before you see it all. With this interesting gameplay element, some decent music and the added mini golf mode, there is quite a bit to do in Neverball. 

The objective in this game is simple, collect a certain amount of coins, and make it to the goal, defined by the bulls’ eye marker. Once you collect the total number of coins, the bulls’ eye marker will glow yellow, which indicates that you can complete the level and move onto the next one. There are also two difficulty levels to choose from, easy and hard and a user created series of maps. While each difficulty level starts out easy enough, to ease you into the concept of the game, it changes quite quickly into more complicated and much longer courses that will test your reflexes. 

While Neverball, is essentially similar to Super Monkey Island, it does a very good job, in its own unique way to keep the aspects of Super Monkey Island intact. Such as controlling the floors of each area and tilting the ball, the quickness and slowness that occurs based on how you tilt each floor with your mouse, the increasing difficulty of each level. Which eventually turn into some interesting levels that will test all your skills and finally the addition of Neverputt, which is essentially mini golf, but still is a welcome addition to the game nevertheless, instead of not having an extra game at all. 

Neverball is a tough game, no question about it. It will test all your skills and you have to be quite careful, as you are moving the mouse around, because the slightest adjustment can send your ball over the edge and having to restart the level. The music in game is all right overall, it will not distract you as you are playing the game I found, as it is calm and not overbearing. In addition, whenever you feel tired of playing Neverball, you can relax with Neverputt. Eighteen holes of mini golf with different difficulty levels move the mouse up and down to change the strength of your shot and simply hit the left mouse button to shoot. Note, Neverputt is accessed in the same folder that you access Neverball, it is a separate execute that you must launch, as you cannot access the game from within Neverball. 

The only issue with the game I could find was simply the camera, which you have to manually control at times, especially as the ball rolls towards the screen. You can control the camera with the left and right mouse buttons, but it would have been nice had it been automatic, but for people who like to control the camera themselves, they should feel right at home with this control scheme.

Nevertheless, Neverball is a fun and challenging game for anyone looking for a different sort of challenge. If you have played Super Monkey Ball, definitely try this game out, as you will feel quite at home with the style of the game. Even if you have not played Super Monkey Ball, try this game out to test your gaming skills and see for yourself how hard this type of game really is.