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- Price: $2.99 (Get Full Version or Free Lite Demo Version)
- Version: 1.2
- Official Site: Makeshift Games
Imprecise controls claim yet another iPhone victim with Chuck the Ball. It’s a shame, too, since Chuck features gameplay that closely resembles the puzzle mode in Sega’s Chu Chu Rocket — an underrated classic if there ever was one. Unfortunately, Chuck the Ball proves that even the Dreamcast’s notoriously uncomfortable control pad is far more of a capable input device than the iPhone’s touch screen, at least for a puzzler of this type.
In Chuck the Ball, players place arrows on a single-screen playfield in an effort to help Chuck the Ball collect stars and avoid obstacles. You can choose the direction an arrow will face by sliding your finger up, down, left, or right. Once Chuck touches an arrow, he will roll in the chosen direction, and the arrow will disappear.
The challenge lies in staying one step ahead of Chuck. Once the level starts, Chuck will continue rolling until either he hits a mine or time runs out, so players will have to think and act fast, in order to plot out a proper course for Chuck in advance.
Chuck the Ball features 105 levels, spread out across four difficulty levels. It’s too bad, then, that inaccurate controls ensure that you’re unlikely to see them all.
At first, the controls are a mere annoyance. Every arrow you place drains 100 points from your score. If Chuck passes through the arrow at some point, you’ll earn those 100 points back. This would be a good design decision if the controls were exact enough to allow arrows to be placed with precision, but as it is, you’ll find yourself missing out on gold medal score requirements many times over through no fault of your own, often because of one misplaced arrow.
As the difficulty increases, so does the frustration. In the game’s first few stages, you’ll only waste a few seconds on the game’s clock when you inevitably place an arrow one square to the left or to the right of where you wanted it to be placed. A handful of levels in, one wrong move means instant death. Funnily enough, one of the first stages to truly frustrate me was called “No Room for Error.” (pictured above) Indeed, Chuck lost countless lives here thanks to a string of errors that weren’t my fault in the least.
A few tweaks could make Chuck the Ball far more playable than it is. If players were able to place arrows prior to Chuck starting his journey (ala the puzzle levels in Chu Chu Rocket), the imprecise controls would hardly be an issue. Better still, the frantic nature of the gameplay could be preserved if Chuck only rolled a little bit slower than he does, to account for the extreme likelihood of touch screen error. In its current state, however, Chuck the Ball only offers a short amount of enjoyment before its controls wear away the last bit of your patience.
No doubt, there’s a serious learning curve to this game, primarily because the control system is more original than a lot of the games on the app store and takes a bit of getting used to. I find this game thoroughly enjoyable and I’m a fairly casual gamer whose hand-eye coordination is nothing to brag about. Frankly, it seems to me you’re experiencing more of what we call impatience and user error than an inherent flaw in the game.
Besides, the game offers up a free play mode that allows players to get familiar with not only the gameplay, but the levels themselves. There’s no score, no timer, and Chuck’s going a bit slower too.
Personally, I haven’t had serious problems with the controls. Sure, I’ve dropped arrows unnecessarily and I’ve had the odd swipe not register; but I haven’t had any make or break problems. And because the levels are short and there aren’t any “lives” being counted, I just restart the level.
And on a side note, there are 100 levels across three measures of difficulty – plus the free play mode and custom level builder.