A pair of games with balls

In many ways choosing whether to invest in creating a game for the App Store is a little like deciding whether or not to invest in a third world country run by a colorful despot. Sure it’s rich in resources and opportunities but your investment could also fall prey to its unpredictable bureaucracy and market. In short the App Store is a little like Venezuela and Chavezland: there is money to be had in the land of Steve. The question is how to approach it. There is no better comparative study in my mind than Skee-Ball and Ramp Champ.

Skee-Ball sells for $0.99 (and has since release) and is #1 in the Paid Apps in the US. Ramp Champ sells for $1.99 and doesn’t show up in the Top 100 Apps or Games. It would be easy to call this a case of frugality trumping design but this isn’t about the $1 difference. There are apps that cost $1.99 or higher that are in the Top 10 or Top 25. There’s something else going on here. I bought both games and settled in for some quality time.

Both games have you rolling/flicking balls up a ramp at targets. Skee-Ball, a licensed version of game, is presented in 3D where you roll balls into cups. The other, Ramp Champ, is in polished 2D where you roll the ball at different and sometimes moving targets.

At first glance Skee-ball looks entirely unremarkable, one of those $0.99 games you delete after a few hours of play. The ramp is unremarkable and looks like something you’d find at an old Arcade. It’s when you take your first toss that you realize there is something remarkable going on here: it just feels good. Freeverse have nailed the game physics. Skee-Ball is as close to the original game as you could get on the platform. That it forgoes a complex ramp design becomes irrelevant once you realize how realistic it feels to roll the balls up the ramp into cups, with the 3D ramp giving your fingers plenty of space to flick. Variety comes in a very clever trade-in system. As you collect game tickets you can use them to purchase a variety of in game objects. Each time you check the objects they randomly shuffle so you never get to see at a glance how many objects the game has. It’s a clever idea that keeps me coming back and gives the impression that there are more objects than in Ramp Champ. Among the many objects are fake teeth, a mullet, New Zealand, a half eaten donut, and a wide variety of balls which you can purchase and then use in game. Some of these balls, like the Sun Ball, include a subtle and pleasant animation or trail when you toss them. The mix between odd collectable items and balls you can use in game gives Skee-ball a wonderful replay value.

Ramp Champ gives you a better impression at first glance. It’s gorgeous. The guys at Iconfactory are all artists I admire: David Lanham (who designed our Mac monster), Louie Mantia, Corey Marion. These guys know how to craft pixels to polished perfection. Ramp Champ is such a visual treat, from the menu system to the redeemable objects, you sort of wish you could do more with it. You see, Ramp Champ is finicky and maddeningly unpredictable, making it very frustrating. It took me four or five days with Skee-Ball to get to the point where I could flick my ball in the general direction and distance I wanted. I still can’t figure out the physics in Ramp Champ. It defies prediction. And since the game is 2D, the ramp itself is a tiny area. Flicking really boils down to speed, but the margin is very narrow. A split second to fast or too slow and you’ll widely over or undershoot. This wouldn’t be half as annoying if it wasn’t for the developers adding several layers of depth to each ramp that require the utmost precision to access. This often means nailing the 2-in-1 shot so that you have enough balls to clear the level and have the ramp shift to the next layer where you have more targets and can rack up certain achievements. With finicky controls this requires more patience than I imagine the average user has. The learning curve is very steep and I have yet to have that sense of payoff that Skee-ball effortlessly creates. Unless you’re a very casual gamer who doesn’t care about reaching those extra layers of each level you’ll quickly find that if you miss even one ball hitting a target, its better just to hit menu and restart, I do it so often I wish there was a restart button.

In the end it boils down to how you like playing with your balls. Ramp Champ is beautiful and I keep going back to it on occasion just to play around in its exquisitely designed sandbox, but Skee-Ball is a game I’ve actually ran my battery down playing.