Ball Labyrinth Meets Videogames
You may, from your youth, remember ball labyrinths: wood boxes with knobs on two sides you use to tilt a platform above the box, with the platform consisting of a wooden maze--with holes or slats in some areas which your ball, if you aren't careful, will fall through. You start at one location on the maze, and by tilting it carefully, try to get your ball to the exit. (The things we used to do for entertainment before videogames...)
Hazard Ball obviously owes a debt to those old puzzles; you control a ball in a maze, controlling it with the arrow keys; it has a degree of momentum, and the longer you hold a key down, the faster it goes, which is useful getting up ramps and such. Points are earned for collecting (running into) jewels and other objects, and there's the whole panoply of things you expect in straightforward videogames: gates opened with keys found elsewhere, powerups that give you special ability, hazards, moving opponents who try to damage you or knock your ball into a hole or opening into space.
New features are added with each level, and while there's certainly a 'twitch' element to the game, it's accessible even to those of us who don't excel at games of that type, since careful motion is more important than reaction speed and mastery of the controls--more of a puzzle than an action game, in the final analysis.
Massively innovative? No, but nicely executed, and intelligent level design holds your interest. And at under 3 megs, it's a swift download.
The Developer Says
One day you wake up only to find yourself trapped inside a mysterious ball with amazing special abilities, somewhere within a cursed labyrinth realm. Wanting to be free again your main objective is to escape each level by navigating your way to the exit. Surviving the many challenges and deadly hazards you will face ahead by using your skill and judgment to stay in control.
Your super abilities will help you survive in your long hazardous journey - being trapped in a special ball means you can do amazing things like build bridges, jump around, detonate bombs, set land mines, teleport, activate pressure pads, ride rails and pipes, regenerate while falling to avoid sudden death, smash walls, and protect yourself with different types of elemental armour, just to name some of them.