Factory Balls 2

Factory Balls 2 is, as you might be able to guess, a sequel to Factory Balls (review here). It's basically the same game, with a few welcome improvements, so I probably won't have too much to say.

As in the original, the basic task is to perform a series of transformations on a ball to get it to look like a given target. This most often consists of painting the ball, often after applying some kind of mask so that only part of the ball is painted, but there's still a fair number of operations available, some of them old (like that thing that I still haven't quite figured out what it is) and some new (you can now make Chia pet-like balls in some of the levels). None of the puzzles is particularly difficult, but a few may stump you for several minutes.

The game now has a total of 30 levels, and automatically saves your progress so you don't have to play it all in one sitting. Another welcome addition is the elimination of the lives system from the original -- now, if you run low on balls, balls that you toss into the recycle bin are actually recycled, so you don't need to worry about failing two-thirds of the way through. This was one of the more annoying features of the original, so I'm glad to see it gone. The graphics, sound, and music are all the same as in the original -- serviceable, if not great. (Although I notice this time around it's much more annoying in my headphones. I guess they accentuate the bass.) One small interface complaint, though, is that there are several operations that you'll often need to use several times in a row, and having to drag the ball to that circle five or six times in a row is a little tedious. If you could just click on the circle instead, it would be vastly simpler.

Anyway, there are some good puzzles in Factory Balls 2, and it's eliminated the things that annoyed me most about the original, so give it a try. You'll definitely appreciate the cleverness in some of the puzzles, and you'll definitely have to think at least a little bit, but it won't leave you frustrated.