Square2Ball

Sometimes, after having finished a time-consuming badge, I look around for another game to play, but don't really feel like going for another badge, so my eye wanders to the "Hot New Games" section of the Kongregate front page to see if there's anything that looks interesting. In this case, it was Square2Ball that my eye landed on. Of course, the Hot New Games section is somewhat of a crapshoot; while Square2Ball is not a bad game, it kind of lacks anything that makes it really distinctive.

Square2Ball is a puzzle game with a familiar format -- you have to get a ball to the exit by pressing the arrow keys. When you press an arrow key, the ball keeps moving in that direction until it runs into a barrier, at which point it stops and you can move it again. The barriers come in various rectangular sizes; some are quite large and some are very small. You also can click on a barrier to cause it to temporarily disappear, but you only have a limited number of clicks that you can use in a given level, and it can only be applied to one barrier at a time (that is, clicking on a second barrier will cause the first one to reappear). Later levels introduce unclickable blocks and keys which unlock purple blocks; nothing too out of the ordinary there.

The game offers a total of 35 puzzles (20 "easy" and 15 "hard"), but even the hardest levels are vastly less complicated than, say, Excit, so none of the levels should take you too long to solve. They are generally well-designed, though; the solutions require at least some cleverness and none of them has any terrible flaws (at least that I can see). The graphics are pretty basic (and the text is, to be honest, kind of ugly); there's no sound, but there is incredibly repetitive background music which will probably drive you crazy in short order.

Anyway, while Square2Ball is not a bad game, there's not quite enough present to make it a really interesting game, either. It'll definitely give you a bit of a challenge, but not too much, and is nice as a quick distraction, but don't expect it to provide entertainment for hours.