Gem Ball

Written by Jake on April 14th, 2007 and posted in Reviews
Tags : action, breakout, downloadable, Egypt, Indie, pc

Gem Ball: Ancient Legends is a downloadable Indie PC game by Urse Games. It’s a 3D breakout clone set in ancient Egypt with great graphics, loads of cool power ups and fun bricks ‘n’ stuff. I love decent breakout clones and this one was very enjoyable.

The game screen is shown at a 3D angle and there is some nice 3D scenery behind the walled playing area. You can even change the angle that you view the screen with the right mouse button, but I thought that the default angle was fine to be honest. The playing area is filled with “bricks” and other interesting objects and your bat is at the bottom of the screen as per usual. The bricks are sometimes piled quite high in columns, and when you smash the bottom one, the pile will drop down vertically ready for you to smash the new bottom one. This isn’t a new idea for 3D breakout games but you never get this sort of thing in traditional 2D breakout games of course.

Some blocks are coloured and when your ball hits them it changes to the same colour - then can you destroy the coloured block with a second hit UNLESS your ball hits another different coloured block meanwhile. You can also get multicoloured balls which can smash any coloured block. Other balls include lava ball, which explodes bricks that it hits; mega ball, which ploughs through bricks in a straight line; and shooting ball, which fires off lasers as it moves around. Naturally you can get power ups like fast/slow ball, multi-ball, sticky bat, shooting bat, big/small bat etc., oh and the “ball thrower”, which is pretty cool! A good thing about the sticky and shooting bats are that they only last for a certain amount of time, not for the entire level. You quite often end up with tons of balls flying around creating havoc and it’s got fun trying to keep them all going.

As per usual certain bricks drop coins and gems for you to pick up for extra points, and there are also the ubiquitous indestructible blocks. Lots of levels have some kind of path that you are encouraged to follow and little arrows (sometimes spinning) help your ball on its way and cause you to hit dynamite and laser cannons which cause chain reactions and shoot bricks for you respectively - oh and there’s also teleports and other stuff. Also, when you get near the end of a level with only a few bricks left, a megalaser appears that you can use to quickly finish off the remaining bricks.

The game has two modes: Arcade and Adventure. I like Adventure mode because you are shown your progress on a map screen and you have to collect 10 artefacts (one every 5 levels) and you are “educated” about Egyptian gods/symbols along the way. Arcade mode boasts 150 levels.

Overall this is a great fun game, although I would say it’s too easy on Medium mode - I got over 20 lives! But I don’t mind that as I enjoy playing the game a lot and don’t feel “punished” like in some harder breakout games. My 6-year old son also played through the whole adventure game over the course of a couple of days and was then giving me advice on it when I played it!

Did I already say that the graphics are great and the music is also good and fitting? I advise you to download the demo and get stuck in. You might also be interested in reading our reviews of some other great breakout games:

• Bricks of Egypt 2
• Fizzball
• Rebound Lost Worlds Recharged

• Gem Ball Information

• Jake's Rating :

  Rating: 4.5
  Readers Rating : no rating yet
• Gem Ball website
• Price : $19.95
• Gem Ball PC Download Now!
• Buy Gem Ball for the PC