Ballance is an adventure puzzle game from 2004 that exclusively came out on PC and hasn’t been available to purchase digitally, until now. Game preservation is important, and publisher Ziggurat has been playing its part by releasing a host of previously “abandonware” titles on PC and other platforms to make them available for modern audiences to purchase. Ballance is another cult classic revived by the publisher, and in my review, I’ll see if it’s worth your time.
Gameplay and Story
Ballance is an entirely gameplay-focused experience where you maneuver and balance a ball through a variety of obstacle courses. There isn’t a story, but you can pretend that the ball has to go someplace really important, and it’s imperative that you ensure it gets there. There are 12 levels to get through, and the complexity of the stage increases as you progress.
The ball can be transformed into other materials like a stone ball or a paper ball that have different weights, and hence different momentum to account for when you’re speeding through a course, or solving a puzzle. You’ll be switching back and forth between these forms multiple times during each level, and that’s part of the fun here.
It’s a game that requires patience, but it’s not overly difficult either. It eases you into the mechanics with enough variety in puzzles and platforming sections to keep things fresh throughout its 3 to 5 hour run-time. I was quite surprised by how long some of the levels were, and thankfully there are multiple checkpoints sprinkled between with extra lives and time pickups to keep you motivated, and rewarded.
You can also rotate the camera in a fixed state to match the orientation of the current platform you’re on, and you can zoom out to see what lies ahead, and around you. Using these mechanics becomes second nature and this degree of control with the ball and the camera itself doesn’t let frustration set in.
Graphics and Sound
Ballance is a 20-year-old game now, and considering it’s a 3D title, it certainly looks a bit dated. Something like Super Monkey Ball has aged gracefully thanks to its stylized approach to visuals, but Ballance has more realistic textures that don’t look as good anymore.
It doesn’t look bad, but as far as I can tell, this is a straight re-release of the original, and there aren’t any improvements, at all. This isn’t a remaster with improved visual effects, textures, or sound effects but a chance to revisit a cult classic in its original state. Some textures are quite low-res and can feel distracting, especially if you have a larger display.
Overall, while I don’t think individual aspects of the presentation are all that special, it comes together nicely. The music especially has this meditative quality that works well with the deliberate style of gameplay.
Feedback
While this is the same game from 2004, there are some issues with how it runs on modern hardware. The game doesn’t have support for widescreen resolutions, and you’ll get a stretched presentation at 16:9, which is the most common aspect ratio for most PC users. If you try to play at 4:3 resolution, the image is stretched regardless, and a lack of pillarboxing makes the overall image look quite bad.
I understand this is just a re-release, but maybe some additions would make things easier. Thankfully, you can use a community patch that fixes a lot of these problems and allows you to choose a proper widescreen resolution at the start, but you’d expect this to be implemented by default.
Verdict
Ballance is certainly a fun puzzle game that stands the test of time for the most part. The levels are varied with a steady difficult curve that eases you into the game’s mechanics and leverages the physical qualities of each ball transformation. While it’s great that the title is available for purchase, it’s still a straight re-release without any quality-of-life improvements or visual upgrades to bring it up to modern PC standards.
