izigame.me

TL;DR there is so much I did not like about my first three or so runs, and I can't play any further.
First off, got to be some of the worst sound design I have ever heard. Everything sounds exactly the same, at the same volume level, and nothing sounds distinct. The obnoxiously loud rolling sounds drown out anything else important, which are all harshly pitched attack intents that hurt to listen to anyways. Music is atrocious, it just sounds like noise. Everything is generally noisy, in a really bad way. I just turned everything down to 1% after a while of playing.
Beginning selections of available items are really boring, and the self-described "gacha system" really isn't it, especially with escalating prices on all categories no matter what you buy or obtain. You almost never see a good Ability, unless it's a shop item that you just can't afford. There's only really one effective "build", and that's the collision-based upgrades. This also leads to all weapons feeling unreliable and pointless, especially when the ammo usage necessary to kill things versus the inherent limit on ammo recovered due to the cooldown of the boost attack leads to an ammo shortage on later stages. So, sometimes, you end up just waiting around dodging attacks while your boost recharges to do more significant damage.
Having the boost button be the same inseparable bind as the fire button is insanely not intuitive -- you fire weapons in the direction of your mouse (sometimes, depending on the auto-aim) but boost in the direction of the arrow keys, leading to boosting in the wrong direction 50% of the time due to muscle memory. This would have been solved by making it a keybind you could separate. The spacebar is right there, and has been used for similar functions in other twin-stick shooters.
Speaking of which, default bindings are atrocious in general. Weapon switch on G is impossible to hit while moving, which is bad in a movement-heavy game. I'm guessing it's a Unity game (hello, Kenney Assets keyboard icons!), and I imagine they couldn't be arsed to figure out how to make scroll wheel bindable, due to it registering as an Axis instead of a Button within the new InputSystem. (I mean, I figured it out eventually on my own for my FPS project...)
Art style looks neat, but also just amounts to visual noise. Enemies are often very tiny and blend in to the stage props. Enemy recognition is also similarly impossible, everything kind of just looks like the same either cluster of boxes or the same orb. Projectiles are often the same color as the stage, and don't necessarily blend in, but do become hard to spot as you're rocketing around and having to process all the other visual noise to pick them out from enemies. Speaking of enemies... absolute bullcrap design to centralize the game around collision damage, only to make every enemy from stage 2 onward spend 75% of the time jumping in the air and being untouchable, especially the second acid boss.
In general, the movement feels way too chaotic -- in a vacuum it's pretty great, but when stages get complex, it's a complete mess. Whoever made the decision to make booster pads put you into the boost state when you're not rolling has never played a minute of this game themselves, and it's very frustrating when wall / corner boost pads have a gigantic hitbox that forces you to blast headfirst into projectiles despite being two meters away from them. Bounce pads and other such hazards are sometimes next to impossible to identify, with flat colors that make them look unimportant and uninteresting, as well as blend into the level geometry. They also have the same sort of issue of having larger hitboxes than normal.
Overall, terrible first impression, and I don't see myself pushing through the issues I have with this game to see it get better.

Go Mecha Ball won me over the moment I dropped into the first level. The controls are buttery smooth with wonderful animations, visual effects and music. The game is fast paced: roll around, bash into enemies, take pot shots with your gun of choice, and mix in various abilities that you can add to your character during each run. It has fairly simple gameplay loop while feeling SO DAMN GOOD to play.
Now the game isn't perfect, it has its share of problems that could be a turn off for some folks. The big problem is that it lacks in variety. The items you collect are not super varied, though I'd say most of them are passable as a whole. The weapons, however, feel fairly dire when it comes to variety. There are a fair few guns on offer during your runs, the problem though is that a lot of them are very similar to each other, to the point where its really hard to distinguish between them beyond their visuals. Thankfully most all of the guns feel good to use, but its a shame a lot of them are so painfully similar to one another. The game also lacks a bit of variety in the levels, you'll see the same arenas fairly often between runs and the level themes are always the same between runs, complete with the same bosses at the end of each level. Granted, the vast majority of arenas you'll fight in, and the bosses you face are fun to fight through, but once again the extra variety would have really helped the game out.
There is also one other small issue that I've run into: it can be tricky to tell exactly how high up in the air you are. You'll end up above your enemies fairly often, and sometimes I misjudge my position when I'm trying to bounce off the top of them or try and ram/shoot them from above. On the whole, this hasn't been a major problem as I've gotten better at judging my position, and missing tends to not be a huge deal anyways, I can just pop back up in the air and try again. Though I think this is something to note if you already have problems with perception in games like this, especially with how fast paced it is.
Despite those criticisms, the game is just too good to put down for me, the core gameplay is just so satisfying that I can easily forgive the lack of variety and occasional troubles with height perception. The game leans harder on the arcade twin-stick shooting aspect than it does the rogue-lite elements. It trades the variety for rock solid gameplay and buttery smooth controls. If you're okay with that trade-off, and enjoy fast paced arcade games, this game is definitely worth your time

GMB is a very special game. It might look like a roguelike/lite but it’s really more of an arcade game with light roguelike elements. Being dropped in levels with random enemies, weapons, abilities and upgrades is all part of the game. But it’s more focused on keeping your combo max (for better currency and passive activation), efficiency, dancing around enemies and being able to do it with all the difficulty levels (there are 5 total). Finishing the game the first time is just the beginning. And doing it with 4 distinct characters along with the way they react to weapons/abilities/upgrades adds to the variety. They might look similar at first but you’ll soon find out otherwise. The game has 4 worlds with 3 levels and one boss each. Each level comes with 3 waves of enemies. The higher difficulties don’t just add more health and damage but more mechanics are also introduced such as the enemies being able to drop mines or heal others.
So let’s get to the positives. Firstly the gameplay is brilliant and something I haven’t seen before. Being a mix of pinball movement with twin stick shooting works incredibly well. It’s a delight and the reason why I remained engaged the entire 25 hours to 100% the game. The graphics are gorgeous and the animations are on point too. The bosses are fun and there are lots of different enemies with their own moves etc. The achievements are reasonable even with the hardest difficulty and clearing the game within 30 minutes. It’s the kind of game that doesn’t have a high difficulty curve. You can get good at it fairly quickly the more time you invest in it.
As for cons, I can mainly think of three. The music doesn’t match the visuals and gameplay. Or there is something weird going on with the mixing that doesn’t make the music shine as much. Other people noted that the levels look too similar and therefore add to the repetitiveness. I can understand this but it didn’t affect me as much because I was so focused on the gameplay. Not all the characters are created equally. Sprout’s speciality is abilities and the first one is unlocked after the first level, assuming it’s a good ability you want. Sprout also has low health. So you start very weak until you get some decent abilities while the other characters are just stronger and better right from the get go. Sprout needs some balancing. There are a few very minor bugs that aren’t really worth mentioning to be honest. And lastly, the next points are more of a feedback to make the game better. Having some sort of control over what weapons, abilities or upgrades you get would be nice. Think of re-roll or banishing stuff. Being able to see the stats that come with upgrades and having an overall stats menu for the character would be cool too. Right now you can only see the stats for your weapons.
GMB is one of those games that are rare. They don’t come very often. The mix of originality that works so well to the point that it feels natural. It’s the kind of game I question why we haven’t had something like it before. Not everyone is going to like it as much or care about what it’s trying to do. It’s not trying to be a roguelike/lite, it’s trying to be its own thing and it’s wonderful for it. I paid over €16 and think it’s worth it. I can’t guarantee that everyone is going to like the game but if you’re one of those who do, you’re going to LOVE IT and want more.