It’s not often that a developer takes a published game back to the drawing board, but that’s exactly what indie studio Gammes has done with BallDog!, the canine casual title for Android. In case you missed its first incarnation, BallDog! …
It’s not often that a developer takes a published game back to the drawing board, but that’s exactly what indie studio Gammes has done with BallDog!, the canine casual title for Android.
In case you missed its first incarnation, BallDog! is a physics-based game that sees you trying to propel a circular dog as far as you can after launching it from a giant catapult.
BallDog! is a fun, simple, and accessible slice of casual gaming goodness, but it arrived with a few niggling problems. Some of these were graphical, some were performance-based, and were to do with how the game was monetized.
They all had to go.
So Gammes set to work making a few essential changes, most notably removing microtransactions from the in-game store. From now on, you’ll only be able to buy skins and launcher upgrades with Dog Cookies, making the experience both more wholesome and more challenging.
But the changes go much deeper than that, with tweaks to the performance, menu layouts, aspect ratios, a new tutorial, and more.
The result is, well, BallDog!
Your goal in BallDog! is to make the game’s canine protagonist, go as far as possible. To do this you first need to launch him from a catapult, before extending his run with taps on the screen to create waves.
During each run you’ll encounter enemies who are trying to stop you in your tracks, and power-ups to help you survive the game’s many pitfalls and obstacles.
These include Tennis Balls, which give you a shield for soaking up three hits, Dog Food, which destroys enemies for a short time, and Steak, which gives you a second chance when you touch the ground or lose all three lives.
Then there are those launcher upgrades, such as Bones, Fire, and Sphere, each giving you initial advantages designed to help you climb the all-important leaderboard.
To check out BallDog! in its new and improved form, head to the Google Play Store to download the game for free right now.
