If you have ever taken an animation course, you’ll know the importance of the bouncing ball. It teaches spacing, squash and stretch, weight, and for those more advanced, emotion. If you’re able to tell a story with just a ball, you’re in good shape. If you can make an entire game with only balls as characters, well… it needs to be fun. So, is it?

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles is an interesting game, as it puts you in the role of Bob, a ball capable of becoming seemingly anything, who is ultimately tasked with taking down the star ball in each movie set. There’s no dialogue, as the game is portrayed through environmental storytelling and pantomiming (think old Lego games). The levels are all open world and fairly large, with lots to find within them, although most of it is not necessary to complete the game or progress.

There are many collectibles that will change your look as well as the effects of your skills. As an example, you can acquire a freezing power very early into the Viking world, which is the first you explore after the introduction. The gameplay involves exploring large set pieces and destroying environments and other balls. Much like the bouncing ball, it’s a basic premise, but contains more nuance as you progress and find different puzzles to solve. And as the game doesn’t do much in terms of holding your hand, most of these require the player to make sense of context cues, such as seeing connections (literal and figurative) between enemies or the world. That’s not to say there’s no direction, as you’re given a goal list and a highlight if you choose to activate it, but the game encourages exploration.

For trophy collectors, the list is not what you’d expect. While beating the game is required, you can get through the entire thing without getting a single trophy, as they all require you to hit the fart button in certain locations. You’re able to reset a level after beating it, so you can still get any that you missed the first time around. If you see something cool, or you’re in a unique situation, chances are you should let loose.

The game is very forgiving, as I didn’t end up dying until I drowned due to ignorance in the second level. I didn’t think I had a chance against the Viking boss as I only had two hit points when the battle started, but I managed to find some throughout and defeated him fairly quickly (although I forgot to fart in his mouth). This fact will either be appealing or a turn off, as it makes the game very accessible. And speaking of accessible, the game offers co-op for people that like playing with others. I didn’t test it, but there’s an option to access it in the pause menu, as well as many points for online play in the levels.

As with most open worlds, players are going to run into bugs. I found myself and enemies getting stuck in geometry, enemies I had to move to a certain location spawning in places I couldn’t access, and world physics not working consistently. Sometimes restarting from the last checkpoint would be sufficient, other times ut required a full reboot of the game. However, doing so would mean losing all my progress in the levels. The first time I encountered this I didn’t make it far into the Viking level and thought it was strange when I had to start over on a fresh boot. When I was nearly done with the Russian side of Space Race and forced to reboot, the realization that I didn’t have access to the level anymore and no progress with the Vikings set in, and I turned it off out of frustration (update: this will be fixed in the day 1 patch per communication received on October 4th).

While not a direct fault of the game, a big thing I look for these days is whether or not my daughter will like it. This seemed like it’d be intriguing for her, but when I played it, she quickly moved onto her tablet. I found myself getting a bit tired of the mechanics if I played it for more than an hour at a time. It’s fun in short bursts, but for being an open world type game with plenty to see and collect, it feels limited in what it offers. And you’re also stuck playing it if you don’t want to lose your progress (I’m assuming a patch will fix this by launch, or it may just be isolated to me).

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles is silly, immature, and willing to laugh at itself for the sake of fun. It’s a nice introduction to open world games for someone that’s never played one, offering several unique settings and an accessible battle system. Despite its offerings though, it fails to live up to other contenders in the genre, especially when it comes to keeping the player hooked for long periods of time. Chances are if you beat it, you’ll quickly roll along to the next thing instead of sticking around.

5 out of 10

Pros

• Large, Diverse Levels to Explore
• Lots of Customization Options
• Accessible to Most Players

Cons

• Save Issues (shouldn’t exist when you play)
• Gameplay Felt Flat
• General Open World Glitches

Bang-On Balls: Chronicles was developed by Untold Tales and published by Exit Plan Games. It launched on NS, PC, PS4, PS5, and XB. The game was provided to us for review on PS5. If you’d like to see more of Bang-On Balls: Chronicles, check out the developer’s site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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