Blast Ball is very very similar to Super Crate Box, but everywhere it had it right and even adds a different type of the gameplay. The game is simple with it being based on having to get various balls and even some rubber duckies through one of two soccer goals. The character has the ability to jump and run either left or right. You have no guns or weapons of any kind, except the bombs that you can activate, but you only begin with one bomb. Eventually you can unlock a spots for a second and a third.

The game’s fun is really based off the the unlock system. Your goal is to do challenge “X” to unlock item “Y”. These challenges consist of getting a certain amount of goals, killing a set number of enemies, or even just surviving for a certain period of time. There are also three stages to unlock which has to be done by scoring ten goals on the previous level. The challenges really drove me to continue playing and literally not stoping until I unlocked whatever challenge I was working on. This led to a good problem of completing the challenge and unlocking, only to play one more game to see what the next challenge and unlock was. This was the ultimate cycle that was extremely hard to break. Unfortunately, I eventually got to a challenge where the description was “??? to unlock cube ball” this led me to essentially stop playing due to the fact I had already unlocked all the levels and had no real clue of what to do to beat the challenge.

The game looks stunning and not because it has amazingly advanced graphics. Rather they are vector based and bring to mind a ton of old school gaming nostalgia. The look of the game makes it feel as though I could have been putting quarters into a cabinet at the local arcade just to beat my friend’s score. It was as though I was getting into a rhythm where I could just keep on increasing my score just like at an arcade. Which leads into another reason why this game is so addicting:The nagging sense that just one more game and I can finally beat my friend’s score and move up the leaderboards.

Blast Ball is Game Center compatible and for the most part, this is fantastic. The achievements fit in with the challenges that are always in the back of everyone’s mind and there are literally leaderboards for everything. There is a slight problem with the achievements: They will not unlock if there is no Wi-Fi available or when 3G is not available. This leads to a perplexing problem of unattainable achievements due to the fact if the challenge was already completed then it would be impossible to go back and redo the challenge to successfully unlock the achievement. The leaderboards luckily don’t seem to suffer from the same problem and are constantly being updated with the latest score.

Overall, the game is super fun but only as long as the challenges keep on flowing. I highly recommend checking it out especially if there are fans of Super Crate Box out there.

More information on Blast Ball is available on their official website. The iOS version can be downloaded at the App Store, universal for iPhone and iPad for $0.99. The Android version can be downloaded at the Play Store for $0.99.