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Ranked as 2535 on our all-time top downloads list with 9774 downloads.
Ranked as 9886 on our top downloads list for the past seven days with 2 downloads.

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REVIEWS

Review

Review by  Benjamin Stauffer Reviewed on 2004-11-22 Attention span: 8/10 One of my favorite 83 games. Controls: 8/10 Game good, Editor hard to learn. Implementation: 9/10 Good game, only one real issue. Overall: 8/10 Challenging game, recommended. X-Ball is described as Breakout with a twist. In Breakout, you were hitting a ball using a paddle at the bottom of the screen. You would hit it towards pieces at the top. When you hit them, they disappear. In X-Ball, your ball bounces off pieces (and level boundaries) without need for a paddle. Your goal is to find two blocks that match, and hit them one after the other. To beat a level, you need to eliminate all of these matching blocks. There are other blocks as well. Some you can bounce off of without them breaking, some give you extra lives or other prizes, and there are blocks that if you hit them, you'll die. When I heard that the game has only five levels, I thought the challenge would die quickly, but I was wrong. The included levels are challenging, and actually quite interesting. Should the those ever become boring, however, the game has a level editor, and you can easily use custom levels from the Internet. There were a few things that would make the game even better, however. You can't just jump into this game without reading the manual, since there is nowhere to get in-game instructions. The game isn't as bad, since your main keys are your arrow keys, but the editor uses several buttons, and a quick reference (should you not be near your computer, or have no patience for manuals) would've been rather nice. Also, it would be nice if when you hit one piece (and are looking for the other one), it shows you which one you just hit. And the biggest complaint of all: when you hit a corner of a piece, your ball doesn't actually make contact with the corner of the block (try hitting a block that doesn't disappear and you'll see it), but the game acts as if it did. It's irritating when you're trying to maneuver around a killer block and you die without actually touching the block. Overall, X-Ball is a good game if you're looking for a good challenge. There's only one irritant that affects your gameplay; the other complaints are either easily worked around or ignored. The level editor is a great feature once you know how to use it. If you liked Breakout, you'll want to give this a try.