Inside Social Games

Starball, an iPhone/iPod Touch game from Quantum Squid Interactive, uses the device’s accelerometer — and a few social features — to live up to its “simply addicting” tagline.

The app is straightforward enough. Players navigate a green ball around a flat, rectangular field with the only objective being to collect as many randomly appearing stars as possible before you die. Here is the catch: The controls are completely based on tilting the iPhone, making use of its accelerometer. As if this didn’t make things tricky enough, the map is also full of smaller enemy red ball. These little buggers bounce back and forth either horizontally or vertically, and if they touch you, it’s game over.

Seems simple, no? Well, it is, but simplicity hardly means boring (look at games like Bejeweled). Also, appearing around the playing field are yellow question marks that turn into random power-ups to help the player reach the stars before they run into a red ball. Power-ups include SloMo (slows red balls), Shrinkage (shrinks your ball), Time-Freeze (stops red balls), Ball Bomb (destroys nearby red balls), Inviciball (destroys red balls you touch), and Ballbuster (destroys all red balls). Most of these last only a limited amount of time, so wise usage of them becomes paramount as you collect more stars and, in turn, trigger more red balls.

Since red balls appear with every star collected, the higher the score, the harder the game gets. Couple this with the accelerometer tilt controls, and you have a recipe for some challenges. Luckily, it doesn’t take very long to get used to the controls, and once you do, you are able to further challenge yourself on one of three difficulties: Beginner, Normal, and Insane, with the harder the difficulties releasing more red balls with each collected star.

Starball also uses OpenFeint’s social gaming platform for the iPhone. At the moment, the one it makes the most use of is the OpenFeint leaderboard system that tracks scores for all three difficulty levels. Games like Bejeweled or Tetris benefited from getting users to compete against existing high scores; Quantum Squid makes perfect use of this through the platform.

Quantum Squid is looking to update Starball in the near future as well. Beyond new music, power-ups, and levels, the company is planning on including achievements as well, and if experience has taught us anything, this simple addition to any game has added hours to many a game player’s experience.

Honestly, the only complaint to be had is that sometimes the tilt controls can become marginally obnoxious. Over time, it feels like they shift a bit off center and other times you can’t see quite what is happening based on your perspective (i.e. lying down versus sitting). Of course, this is just the nature of this type of game, and Quantum Squid does a good job of mitigating it by allowing you to pause and recalibrate at any time during play. Granted, it does break the flow of the game a bit, but the effort is most certainly appreciated, and frankly, the game is too much fun for us to care.

That said there are no real complaints to be had. Starball is simple, easy to learn, and a ton of fun. Furthermore, with its social features growing through OpenFeint, the level of addictiveness will only get worse… or better, depending on how you look at it. Highly rated by other sites and its players, Starball is well worth its $0.99 price tag.