Preview: 3D StressBall (by CanDo)



Company's Name: CanDo Games
Game's Title: 3D StressBall
Game's Release Date: Feb. 2003
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3D Stress Ball from canDo Multimedia promises to be as addicting as Tetris. Once you start rolling around the levels you’ll never want to stop. The premise is to get all the sliver rings on the board so you can open the portal to the next level. Sure it sounds simple but this is really a brain teaser-type game. It is built using the Havok engine and Shockwave 3D. This really helps create a realistic environment with good solid physics, which is important due to the object of the game.

You start on one end of a suspended checked floor and have to tilt the floor in various directions in order to maneuver the ball to a lighted portal to the next level. On the first few boards it’s pretty straight-forward, point A to point B with a few pit falls to roll around. But soon they introduce rings. Now you’ll need to maneuver around the floor to collect all the rings in order to open the portal. This can be really tough to do but not impossible, it just takes a good eye and a steady hand. The floor often has slants and other obstacles for you to maneuver around.

Each level gets harder and harder, there is less floor to roll on and it has a different shape, and more rings to get in order to open the next level. As long as you don’t move the mouse you can sit there and study the floor, which is recommended. The handling is very smooth and fast. This lets you make quick changes in the ball’s progress so you don’t fall off. There is also a level editor so you can generate your own crazy floor designs to test your friend's mental power.

It’s a challenging game without being impossible to play. The later levels do get pretty hard but with some patience and a quick hand you’ll get through them. So you won’t have much stress playing 3D Stress Ball, just hours of brain teasing fun. When released it will run on Windows and both OS/X and OS/9 for the Mac.

SCREENSHOTS