Ball of Woe - a strange, dark tale for iPhone, iPad and Android devices - is now available on the App Store and Google Play.
Doppler Interactive - a two-person Sydney-based independent development team, has just released Ball of Woe to the App Store and Google Play - a bizarre, 3D game for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
Ball of Woe is a dark tale of prayers-gone-awry, in which the player takes the role of a tired God, called forth to Nicetown in order to drive away sadness and bring joy to the land. Ball of Woe combines challenging gameplay with lush, colorful visuals, a rich musical score and a deep storyline - slowly revealed as the player rolls their way from Nicetown and into Heaven... a Heaven of sorts.
Ball of Woe tasks you - a dusty God - with rolling a ball of sadness through an ever-changing game-world and into Heaven. You must use your mighty finger to strategically place Puffs on the ground, driving the Ball forward, upward - to salvation.
“We wanted to create tight, robust controls combined with very fundamental gameplay - building an accessible skeleton over which to hang the more unorthodox visual and narrative style we were trying to achieve” -Joshua McGrath
Ball of Woe has what can only be described as an ‘old-school’ difficulty level. To pick up and enjoy the game is easy - but to complete the game requires a triumph of the will - and a triumph of the finger.
The Ball of Woe world is colorful and highly detailed - as the game progresses the player travels through mountains, volcanoes, caves - through the clouds and into outer space, before finally reaching Heaven.
“Ball of Woe is all about taking something that is beautiful and turning it into something dark and sad. We designed the visuals to reflect that; a cute panda is ‘liberated’ by the Ball and becomes a skeleton, as the bandaged Woeful leap out of the ground” -Jessica Ellis
The Ball of Woe musical score is tightly tied to the visual design; as the player moves from mountains to forest - the score changes to reflect this - creating a deep atmosphere and complementing the lush textures.
“Sound is so important in building a fully-realised game world. We wanted players to feel like they were really inside that cave - and maybe empathise a little with the game characters.” -Joshua McGrath
At the very core of Ball of Woe is a rich, dark and hilarious narrative - uncovered as the player rolls through the world, talking to the Woeful, ‘liberating’ Zus, reading the Mail and ultimately - rolling into Heaven.
“The story is the beating heart of Ball of Woe - we gave every character their own voice, their own backstory - it all ties together and builds a very elaborate, entertaining and hopefully-meaningful game world.” -Joshua McGrath
“It’s really hard to concisely convey chunks of a story in these little Tweet-sized pieces. We wanted to make the narrative continually moving forward, expanding - but still accessible and most of all - entertaining.” -Jessica Ellis
With an enormous amount of dialogue under the figurative ‘hood’- Ball of Woe rewards players for exploring and climbing ever higher through the game world.
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About Doppler Interactive
Doppler Interactive is a cosy, two-person development team based in Sydney, Australia.
Doppler Interactive is composed of Joshua McGrath - software developer, beard-owner, occasional 3D-modeller; and Jessica Ellis - texture artist and designer of ultra-bizarre game concepts.
They divide their time between deep-space salvaging for scrap (figuratively), and developing games and tools using the Unity game engine.
Ball of Woe is the first entry in the greater "Welcome to Nicetown" universe.
Before Ball of Woe, they created Tidy TileMapper (a tool for painting game maps in Unity) and did a little Game Jamming at Global Game Jam 2012 with "The Life and Times of Pepper Jack".
Links
Ball of Woe site: http://www.ballofwoe.com
Ball of Woe promotional assets: http://www.ballofwoe.com/#ImageCollections
Ball of Woe trailer: http://youtu.be/Bk9snFBnbqI
Ball of Woe App Store link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/ball-of-woe/id550811932
Ball of Woe Google Play link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.DopplerInteractive.BallOfWoe
Doppler Interactive Blog: http://blog.dopplerinteractive.com
Doppler Interactive Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dopplerinteract
Doppler Interactive Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dopplerinteractive
Contact us: http://contact.dopplerinteractive.com/
