I loved Subbuteo. In fact growing up, it was a bit of an obsession. So when I first booted up Blo-Ball (with no idea of what it was) I was smitten immediately.However no obsession is without it’s flaws and If my fingernails could have talked all those years ago I think they’d agree with me now.
The thing is, Blo-Ball looks great, it’s accessible and it’s a breeze to play. So why then did I not feel particularly fulfilled after playing it?
Part of the problem comes from the fact that on the odd occasion (usually in the heat of a game) the controls will cause you to swing the camera incorrectly away from the action. The equivalent of taking you’re eyes of the ball and finding that Rooney has sneaked in front of you and nodded into the net.
Secondly, there’s very little growth in the game beyond singular games. Surely it would have been easy to implement a tournament or a league and provide the game with more longevity and a little bit of competition as well.
As it stands, the game plays second fiddle to another iPhone app called Goals!:
Essentially an IOS port of Sensible Soccer and sold for the same price as Blo-Ball as well.
Blo-Ball is a good game but it’s unfortunately undone by not being good enough. Hopefully a couple of updates and add on features may change that sooner rather than later.
We’ve just released version 2.0. We think that covers most of your points, although we’re holding off on leagues / tournaments until we can add Game Center/Openfeint in as well.