This work has everything I love about indie games – unusual, initially cryptic, but if you take the time to invest a little, ultimately an exceptionally deep and fun way to spend a few hours of your short life.
A brief synopsis would be – a colorful quirky plinko/pool roguelite with a ton of charm and replayability. At the beginning of each turn, the game randomly places and rotates cubes into which you shoot your ball, which is set in a random position each time, and the game calculates the complete trajectory for every possible angle of the ball's launch. At the end of each turn, you get to choose 3 stickers on the sides of the cubes (each has 6, of course) and you stick the stickers that give extra points and activate various effects.
Your task is to find the optimal angle with as many sticker activations as possible within the shortest time of possible 180° launches, which will allow you to earn extra points, activate as many effects as possible, and based on the points and money earned, buy new and better stickers to reach the score threshold.
By reaching the threshold, you gain access to an additional cube on which you will stick extra stickers and a new, even higher threshold to reach.
Simple.
The concept is really not that complex, but after about 20 cubes on the screen and hundreds of possible stickers, the trajectories and effects become very hectic, and it all becomes a rather fun experience for me.
I think the only thing I can criticize about this charming work is that it is somewhat difficult and incomprehensible at first – some training mode or F.A.Q. would greatly ease the understanding and grasp of the gameplay loop. Yet, I somehow really enjoy jumping into similar indie games knowing almost nothing about them and experiencing the learning of the rules as a sort of puzzle, where this game provided me with a good dose of satisfaction.
As far as I can see, while writing this, it has been less than 10 days since the game's release, and it is already on v11, which means that the dev team is quite active and we can expect more interesting news and features in the game. Overall, the whole experience somewhat reminds me of “Mosa Lina,” Luck be a landlord, and Nubby's Number Factory, on some level similar simple (yet deep and complex) indie gems that I can wholeheartedly recommend, just as I recommend Sticker/Ball.
A copy of the PC version of the game was provided by the publisher Future Friends Games for the purpose of this review.
