Blazin' Balls

MStar Games, creators of Space Pirates from Tomorrow and Carrum (available on XBox LIVE Indie Games) today officially announce their next title, Blazin' Balls - a simple, addictive 3D puzzler and racing game. At first glance this seems an odd combination, but it will appeal to fans of simple, direct "challenge" games. Players must pick their path along a space-borne road comprised of various colored block avoiding gaps, collecting coins and trying to beat the target time for each level. The colored blocks effect your ball in various ways, with some slowing you down, some speeding you up, others making you bounce and a couple of other effects which will intrigue and infuriate gamers in equal measure. The game soundtrack continues the MStar tradition of rich electro-ambient beats.

Following the complexity of Space Pirates, it's a welcome change of pace for studio head DrMistry. "It's nice to work on a game which is bite-sized, rather than a 5-course banquet. As a developer it focuses attention on tight core game play and as a gamer it's instant gratification, which is the polar opposite of Space Pirates. It's a simple, pretty stripped-down game with a clean and minimalist aesthetic coupled with clean and minimalist game play. Feature bloat was something we were very wary of from the start on this project because we wanted to really hammer this out and get the basics right before anything else. But we quickly realized that the strength of Blazin Balls lies in it's simplicity - just your ball and the road and the clock and that's all that matters. Also, it's much more of an 'Indie Game' than Space Pirates, and truer to the vision of what an indie label should be about - quirky, fun, simple titles."

With only a couple of weeks to go until release testing and a price tag of 80 MSP, Blazin' Balls should hit the marketplace in March. More details and screenshots can be found at the MStar Games web site ( www.mstargames.co.uk)