Switchball

by Vivendi Universal

Product Features

• Inventive and fun puzzle-driven play based on real world physical interactions.
• Beautiful and elegant 3D graphics offer panoramic views of 30 incredible levels in 5 amazing environments - Skyworld, Iceworld, Caveworld, Cloudworld and Lavaworld.
• More than 40 interactive objects including wooden blocks, sheets of cloth, spinning fans, magnets, cannons and many more.
• Morph the marble into a different ball, with unique physical properties including the metalball, powerball and airball to more easily get through each area.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000VIHAPY
• Item Weight: 10.1 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: October 9, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,082 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Switchball¿ is an intricate puzzle game set in a stunning 3D world. Control an ever-changing ball along a narrow winding course suspended in midair. Solve your way through challenging levels jam-packed with obstacles, traps and mazes.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Switchball compared to Ballance, March 24, 2008

By 

Martin - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Switchball (Video Game)

First off, I do very much appreciate that a company created a game that may be dubbed a sequel to Ballance. The ideas in Switchball and the level design are nice extensions to Ballance. Now a few comments on the gameplay and an assessment of Switchball compared to Ballance.

I found Switchball via serendipity, purchased and installed the full version without a hitch on my Vista system, thinking this game would be a nice Easter present for my kid. On Easter Sunday, however, I ran into substantial trouble getting the game installed on my kid's otherwise standard XP system - I kept getting a blank registration screen during Setup. The game made me waste some 2 hours on Easter Sunday walking through all trouble shooting sections in vain, until I decided to walk through the registry via Regedit and eliminate all and every traces of Sierra. For some reason, the installation then went smoothly - yet a software company should not make parents walk via an otherwise critical editor through the registry of some standard PC. That experience tinged very much the impression of Switchball.

Gameplay: I can't help but compare this game to Ballance, which is a class in its own, way more elaborate than those Marble Madness derivatives, which convey a simplistic impression with respect to the gameplay in general and the graphics when compared to Ballance and to Switchball. The gameplay and the atmosphere with Ballance are much more intense than with Switchball, though. There are three reasons:

1) The music and sound design of Switchball is simplistic, thus getting boring and stale quickly, quite in contrast to the sound design and music coming with Ballance. I am very much under the impression that Sierra whipped up some game levels and pressed towards publishing, treating aspects such as game atmosphere and music as ancillary components - a very detrimental and wrong management decision here: Switchball cannot hold a candle to Ballance in terms of game atmosphere.

2) Game control: Switchball supports mouse and keyboard control, whereas Ballance supports keyboard control only. While the mouse is a nice feature to have, e.g. to get some overview of some game level, keyboard control is more precise and my kids' preferred way to move around. The keyboard control of Switchball is quite comparable to the keyboard control of Ballance, up to an important difference: at times there is some slack in the keyboard control, which makes it difficult to master some critical level details. This may be a programming bug or a real-time issue and/or may be alleviated when some physical Ageia graphics board is part of the system, don't know - yet this randomly sloppy keyboard reaction may lead to frustrations at times. Ballance in contrast does support a very precise and direct keyboard control not suffering from occasional glitches like Switchball.

3) The paper ball of Ballance is something missing in Switchball. I loved the intricacies of the tumbling paper ball in Ballance. Switchball supports new game ideas, such as jumping, magnetic and boosted balls; the lovely and simple paper ball would have been a very nice addition to Switchball, though.

Wrapping up, I very much welcome Sierra's Switchball. My kids did and do have quite some fun with this game, albeit they still miss the atmosphere conveyed by Ballance. By all means, keep those games coming - lovely and timeless game idea. I just hope that the creators of Ballance may get together again creating further sequels to Ballance, or help other companies in this endeavour and provide their expertise in creating captivating game atmospheres.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars TagletGames.com Review: 4 Star, January 7, 2009

By 

J. Fenner "jon39357" (Maine) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Switchball (Video Game)

Game Title: SwitchBall

Game Synopsis: You have four kinds of balls, marble ball, metal ball, power ball, and air ball. By using these four different balls you have to work through a maze, with obsticals in the way! You can interchange the four balls and certain points, and though the game may sound easy, watch out! It gets harder alomg the way as you solve more, and more puzzles! I think there's about 30 in all.

Game Category: Puzzle, Strategy

ESRB Rating: E

TagletGames Rating (TG Rating): ****

Average Community Rating: TBD

Retail Price: $9.97

Available At: Amazon.com

Pros: It has good graphics, and displays very well what would happen if you really rolled a ball up a ramp and pushed a box, or pushed a barrel off a hill. And it is a very fun game, with nice music.

Cons: It gets a LOT harder in the last few levels (in Lava world) and unfortunetly you can not jump ahead to the next level until you solve the one you are on.

Be sure and check out the other game reviews at [...]

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun ball roller/puzzle hybrid, January 19, 2008

By 

Lorben - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Switchball (Video Game)

While at first it may look like you're average ball roller, this is much more of a puzzle game than Marble Madness or Super Monkey Ball ever thought about being. With roughly 80% of the game completed the difficulty curve has been very smooth. For the most part the puzzles are physics based. None have been brain busters so far but once you know what it do it can be difficult to pull it off.

The background light techno is relaxing. Graphics are clean and attractive. The physics are very well done which is to be expected in a game built around them. There is no built in vsync option for this game and I got some noticeable screen tearing when I first loaded it up. After forcing vsync through the Nvida control panel (which can also be done in the ATI control panel) it looked great.

Long story short; the game is fun. I would recommend it.