Qwertyuiopia

Neverball isn’t a new game, but has for a long time been one of the cutest open source games one could possibly have on a desktop computer.

Well, on Feb 2 2009 version 1.5.0 came out, bringing the game’s development out of a long hiatus. The new version sports a huge list of changes, which bring the game to a whole new level of “polished” production-wise.

For those that don’t really know what I’m talking about, Neverball is a 3d platform game, where you roll a ball to collect coins by tilting the platforms it’s on. Along with it comes a mini golf game based on the same engine, called Neverputt. Its attractive and simple design and simple object physics make it a game everyone, regardless of age, operating system or processing power can enjoy (well, almost). In some way you’re lucky, since it’s probably good timing to be checking it out for the first time. 

Neverball has been started by Robert Kooima in 2003. What’s mostly been done on the 1.5.0 version, is all the small things that commonly give commercial games an edge over open ones. That is, better balancing of the difficulty curve of the game by reordering the levels,  as well as adding game modes and expanding on the help screens.

More content is  always good too; The current version includes 141 Neverball levels and 134 Neverputt holes. Those are definitely enough to do the trick of supplying a universe complex enough to be worth learning and revisiting.

Along with those big changes (the complete list can be found on the neverball.org website) come a lot of minor of important ones, such as map corrections to existing levels, cross compatibility, display and performance tweaks, and even changes to the way the game physics work.

I really enjoyed replaying the levels, as well as checking out the new ones, and I was very impressed at how much the whole experience has improved. The decision of separating “challenge mode” from just playing a level has made the menu system seem much more logical, and the rearrangement of the levels has definitely improved the flow of the game, leaving you stuck in front of a level impossible for your skill way less often.

So, Neverball! Yay!

By the way, Ubuntu users will have to wait until 9.04 (jaunty jackalope) or otherwise find a .deb package.

links:

• Neverball.org
• Neverforum
• Neverwiki
• Robert Kooima, Creator of Neverball, interview

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 8:14 and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.