Paintball- The Game

Another twist on the mouse games genre

Reviewed by Shawn from afro-ninja.com

Paintball- The Game is a mouse game where you simply need to draw inked paths to navigate your little red ball to the goal. It’s also physics-based, as your ball will bounce off and react accordingly to whatever lines are on the screen. With well over 100 levels there’s plenty to see, but there isn’t much variety separating any of them.

Paintball is pretty entertaining for a while, but in most cases, is far too easy of a game. There’s no limit on the amount of paths you can draw, and if you mess up you just reset. There’s also never any additional challenge besides navigating around stationary obstacles. A lot of levels feel uninspired, as if random objects were chosen to be the stages. Most of the time the surfaces in the level just serve as ‘distracters’ when the path you need to draw is something pretty simple. Some of the levels do force you to be creative with your paths though, and that’s a good thing. Then all of the sudden you’re stuck in very hard level like ‘100’ or ‘Hill’ which are nearly impossible to pass. While the ball generally acts realistically to the lines you draw, there seems to be an artificial element to it, as sometimes the ball will seem to bounce higher or have more energy than it should. Not really an issue though.

The graphics are passable but lacking any sort of detail. The background for every level is just a blue/purple gradient. Even a simple texture overlay would have helped. I like the filter effect added to the paths you draw, makes it look kind of like icing. But some kind of variation in the levels would have been great, even if was just changing some colors here and there or changing the way the paths look. The sound effects are limited to a bouncing ball, which is fine. The music however only has one track that loops a little too quick considering how long this game can go on for. You can mute it but only in the beginning, once you start the game you can’t change the mute. Some extra tracks could have really helped this out.

Another notable feature is the level editor, which is almost hidden away- for some reason it’s in the options screen. With it you can build any level you like, just like the ones you see in the game. After making it you can test and save it, and then load levels that others have made. In fact that’s how most of the game was created, Claxor simply perfected the level editor and sent it out for people to make him levels for the game. Nothing wrong with that though.

The bottom line though, is that flash games are meant to grab your attention and make you play for a little while. Despite any shortcomings, I still sat down and played this game for over 100 levels straight, just to see what the next level looked like. Paintball is a good first effort but if Claxor wants to continue the series he’s going to need some variety. Gravity shifts, warps, something. But perhaps that would be moving too much into the territory of games like ball revamped. Either way, I’m looking forward to what comes next.

Click here to play Paintball- The Game






Comments (1) [view all]

  Latest comment left by Leefree_123:

I Rather enjoyed this game whil the music annoyed me to death the idea is so simple yet it heaploads of fun

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