Kid Ball Adventure [Xbox]
Developed by Spoonbox Studio and Ratalaika Games, Kid Ball Adventure follows you in the role of Kid Ball in a tale as old as time… with your love being kidnapped by a large reptilian foe. You’ll have to quest through levels of precision-platforming in order to track down your damsel in distress, with levels increasing in difficulty as you go. You can move left or right, and that’s it - the bouncing is automatic and perpetual, with the only control you have over your character being the timing in which you move through the level, dodging the hazards that come your way.
In order to progress you’ll need to collect the key within each level to unlock the exit door, and then it’s time to bounce. Carefully timing your bouncing through the level to avoid enemies and spike traps is important, as is picking up all of the emeralds you can see - though missing these won’t prevent your advancement. For every 10 emeralds you collect, you’ll gain an extra life, which is definitely very much needed the further you go, so it’s always worth weighing up if it’s worth going for that hard to reach gem. Thankfully every so often you’ll climb a set of stairs or move on to a new location, saving your progress and acting as a checkpoint for if you run out of lives.
Once you hit level 50, there’s a boss fight where you’ll have to bounce on the enemy’s head - and let me tell you, this is harder than it sounds! Once you’ve defeated the boss, you’ll then be able to rescue your love… but then you end up trapped instead! So for the final 50 levels, you’ll play as the Pink Ball instead, with the challenge increasing quite dramatically - culminating in a final boss fight at level 100. As well as Adventure mode, there are alternate game modes available including Time Trial, as well as options such as “No Death” or “Doomsday” if you’re looking to increase the challenge further.
The visual style is very simple, with levels consisting of block platforms against various castle backdrops. The environments themselves play the role of enemy, with strategically placed spikes being the main source of frustration - and death - as I made my way through the levels. All too often I’d find myself mistiming a jump ever so slightly and one of these spiky bastards would clip me. Likewise, there are large spiky block enemies that may look all happy and cute - but boy oh boy did they cause an unreal number of deaths. Other enemies are introduced along the way, from flying enemies to big bouncy lemon-looking foes, and these all add to the stress, as you’ll often find that making a silly mistake one time will lead to a spate of them in quick succession afterwards.
The soundtrack varies as you progress through differently themed areas, with many of the tunes being decently catchy. Going in, there was a slight worry that the soundtrack would quickly become tiresome, but with the progression of the musical themes as you access new areas, this kept things much fresher than anticipated and the tracks do have a certain level of ‘epic quest’-ness to them.
Overall, Kid Ball Adventure is a very simply designed game, and one that won’t take too long to nab all of the achievements in - you don’t even need to complete all of the levels to get the full 1000 gamerscore, with the last achievement popping upon completing level 20. There’s also no other incentives in place for the latter 80 levels - nor does there seem to be anything within the main menu to record this, which is a shame.
Priced at £4.19 on Xbox, Kid Ball Adventure is a fairly cheap title - with variety across the different game modes to keep you coming back for more. It does offer a good level of challenge, and compels you to have another run after run due to the fun gameplay despite its pretty generic overall feel.
In the end, we decided to give Kid Ball Adventure the Collecting Asylum rating of 6.5/10.
Are you interested in Kid Ball Adventure? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to EastAsiaSoft for the Kid Ball Adventure Xbox review code!
