While playing Ballance I was reminded of a moment from my childhood. I remember as a young boy going with my mom and sister as she—my sister that is—was taking a piano lesson. As she was learning, I sat in what I can only describe as the prototypical old lady house with nary an action figure or a Gameboy to pass the time in what felt like an eternity. In my attempt to cure the boredom, I found a pen in my mom’s purse that had a somewhat uniquely shaped cap, and I began playing with that cap—imagining it was a spaceship and using it to play pretend Starfox.
I bring this up because to a certain degree, Ballance reminded me of a time when, as boredom sets in, kids can make toys out of almost anything. This is why I was initially excited to try Ballance, as games like Marble it Up or Marble Blast have proven that even playing with marbles can be made into fun games. But Ballance felt more like trying to play with a pen cap as an adult—boring, pointless, and kind of embarrassing.
You can almost see the connection between the game and my memory. A rerelease of the “classic” 2004 game released by Atari, Ballance is a simple game about rolling a ball through a simple obstacle course. It almost goes to show how patient gamers were back in those halcyon days—not requiring the flash and speed of something like Marble it Up or even Super Monkey Ball—which was actually released three years prior to this game. In a lot of ways you really have to make your own fun with Ballance, because the game sure isn’t providing it.
There really isn’t a lot to say about the game, and maybe a profoundly minimalist experience was what the game was/is going for. You roll a ball through a collection of 12 sparse levels, occasionally coming up against obstacles that require you to change the ball’s type. You’ll start with a traditional wood—obviously since all good balls are made of wood—sometimes switching to stone which is heavy and dense, or paper which is light and floaty. I really wish the starting ball would’ve been steel since it might’ve brought together a rock-paper-scissors kind of connection, but the game isn’t even that interesting.
“…Everything about the game’s aesthetic is boring even by 2004 standards, the same year Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Katamari Damacy came out.”
But playing Ballance is really just a slog. None of the levels provide any discernible challenge beyond switching to stone to move some blocks, or hit a switch, or switching to paper to get pushed up to higher platforms by a fan. Levels are so straightforwardly built and lacking any kind of motion and momentum that it just gets boring really fast. When any kind of speed does happen, you’re usually locked to pinball rails, so there’s no danger or tension related to your speed.
Not that you really need to go fast for any reason, since every level is designed as a literal balancing act—a Ballance-ing act, if you will—that you’re never really encouraged to pick up speed, even as the redundant timer ticks down. Not that you’ll even need to worry about it since the game is incredibly generous with its time extension pickups.
And the game is just boring on an audio/visual level as well. Despite being a 2024 rerelease, the game hasn’t been upgraded to a full 1080p resolution—capping out at 1600 x 1200—and everything about the game’s aesthetic is boring even by 2004 standards, the same year Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Katamari Damacy came out. It’s all just flat stone textures against a boring cloudy skybox, and the music is just discordant ambience attempting to evoke some kind of mystic vibe, but it comes off completely lifeless and dull.
“In a lot of ways you really have to make your own fun with Ballance, because the game sure isn’t providing it.”
I’ve griped in the past about games being “rereleased” in the modern day or on modern consoles without any conceivable updates, and I think that’s something that irks me the most about Ballance. Every time it loads, my screen had a seizure for like 10 seconds before it booted up. The game launches natively in German which required me to launch the App Config Tool to switch it to English—which it prompts you to do when you launch the game, and is the ONLY way to do it, but is never explicitly told to you. I kind of get why since Cyparade is a German studio, but not having localized versions seems amateurish.
Even as a “modern” rerelease, you’d think that Ballance would’ve launched in 1080p but for some reason, it starts in 640 x 480 and if you click out of the game for any reason, it just locks the game into a kind of windowed mode, either tucking it in the corner of the screen or dead centre with no way to make it fullscreen. I’ve said in the past, I use a Surface Book 3 for most of my gaming, so while it’s not the most powerful machine, I know it can handle something like this.
And it doesn’t even have updated camera controls. You have to hold Shift and press left or right to move the camera like Neanderthal. What was wrong with using the mouse? Did they not have those in 2004? You already control the ball with WASD—well, you actually control it with the directional buttons, but you can make it WASD in the controls menu, like an adult.
I wanted to believe that maybe Ballance was a good game in 2004 since it was a simpler time for gaming, but the fact that this was released on a platform that had not only Half-Life 2 but also the first version of World of Warcraft in the same year, I don’t even think I can say that much. Ballance is bog-standard, uninspired and boring, especially when more interesting and more exciting games involving balls exist. With nothing in the way of updating, this game remains a relic, and you’d honestly have more fun playing with ACTUAL marbles.
