Virballs (Early Access) review for PC

I’m a fan of Ratchet and Clank. I’m a fan of Kirby. So when a game comes along like Virballs that sells itself as a mixture of Kirby and Ratchet and Clank, you better believe I’m going to be interested.

Obviously any game can claim whatever it wants as influences. But the interesting thing about Virballs is that it might actually deliver on what it sets out to be.

Mind you, that comes with a big caveat: the game only just released in Early Access. Not only that, since we’re talking about a game that’s very clearly still in the early-ish stages of Early Access, there’s not a lot of gameplay in Virballs’ current form. There are only five levels here, and none of them are particularly long, which makes the game’s current asking price of $20 feel a little steep.

That said, as long as you’re okay with overpaying now for a short version of the game, what’s on offer in Virballs at present suggests the game will be worth watching to see how it evolves. After all, given what’s here now, it’s easy to imagine it turning out to be something special.

A big part of this can be attributed to the way it shows off its influences. The Ratchet and Clank part is obvious: it’s a 3D platformer where your character – a sentient rock, possibly? – is equipped with some pretty decent firepower. The enemies that you’re shooting at could stand to be a little more varied, but that’s where the Kirby influence comes in.

See, not only can you shoot the enemies, you can also suck them up and turn them into new weapons. Different blobs have different effects – for example, the red blobs turn into a fireball when you shoot them, while another type of blob turns into bees that attack your enemies. The game is promising that, in total, you’ll be able to mix and match the different blobs into around 40 combinations, which would represent a pretty varied arsenal at your disposal.

To go back to that caveat, though, Virballs is still just an Early Access game, and it’s entirely possible that none of its promised roadmap comes to pass. Not only that, it’ll definitely need to evolve a little if it wants to live up to its potential. At the moment the enemies and the landscapes don’t seem varied quite enough, so it’s totally possible that what seems fun now over an hour or two will seem less so if the game gets more content that’s just a rehash of what’s already present.

Still, given the state that Virballs is in already, it feels reasonable to expect that it’ll continue to evolve into something worthwhile. And if it doesn’t? Then even in its current state, if the price were to come down, it’d offer an hour or two of fun. Here’s hoping, though, that it’s able to deliver on its clear potential.

Bolder Games provided us with a Virballs PC code for review purposes.