''GooBall'' is a 2005 an

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware ** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board * Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games * ...

-style

puzzle video game Puzzle video games make up a broad genre of video games that emphasize puzzle solving. The types of puzzles can test problem-solving skills, including logic, pattern recognition, sequence solving, spatial recognition, and word completion. H ...

developed by Over The Edge Entertainment (now

Unity Technologies Unity Software Inc. ( doing business as Unity Technologies) is a video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment (OTEE) and changed its name in 2007. Unity Technol ...

) for

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

and published by

Ambrosia Software Ambrosia Software was a predominantly Macintosh software company founded in 1993 and located in Rochester, New York, U.S. Ambrosia Software was best known for its Macintosh remakes of older arcade games, which began with a 1992 version of Atari ...

. It is Over The Edge's first game, and runs on an early beta version of the

Unity engine Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a varie ...

, which it was meant to showcase. Though it was highly downloaded, the game was commercially unsuccessful, leading Over The Edge to change its focus from making games, to making the Unity engine.

Gameplay

The player assumes the role of an alien stranded on Earth. "Goober", as the alien becomes known to the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

, is stuck inside a life support device made of protoplasm. The gameplay is similar to the ''

Super Monkey Ball ''Super Monkey Ball'' is a series of arcade platform video games initially developed by Amusement Vision and published by Sega. The series debuted in 2001 with the arcade game ''Monkey Ball'', which was ported to GameCube as ''Super Monkey Ba ...

'' series in that the player tilts the environment, which causes Goober to roll around in it, collecting gems and making its way to the end gate within the imparted time. Goober can stick to surfaces by holding down the

command key The Command key (sometimes abbreviated as Cmd key), , formerly also known as the Apple key or open Apple key, is a modifier key present on Apple keyboards. The Command key's purpose is to allow the user to enter keyboard commands in applicati ...

; this ability can be used to climb walls, or to avoid falling off from ledges. Jumping while in sticky mode launches Goober away from the wall, which players can use to reach the end of more advanced levels.

Reception

Inside Mac Games ''Inside Mac Games'' (''IMG'') started in 1993 as an electronic magazine about Apple Macintosh computer gaming distributed by floppy disk, eventually becoming a website. History In 1992, Tuncer Deniz, who was unemployed, decided to create a maga ...

'' writer Mark Satterthwaite praised the game's level design, sound effects, and especially its graphics, saying that the game "offers lighting and

shader In computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that calculates the appropriate levels of light, darkness, and color during the rendering of a 3D scene - a process known as ''shading''. Shaders have evolved to perform a variety of speci ...

and particle effects more commonly seen in top-of-the-line shooters like Doom 3". He said that "smooth sand and rippling water ..looks better than anything in Halo or Doom 3", and called it "one of the few truly raphicallyimpressive" Mac games at the time. However, he criticized GooBall's

camera A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...

orientation, and its lack of

gamepad A gamepad is a type of video game controller held in two hands, where the fingers (especially thumbs) are used to provide input. They are typically the main input device for video game consoles. Features Gamepads generally feature a set o ...

support. Apple games reviewer Brad Cook compared GooBall to

Robert A. Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein (; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accu ...

's ''Stranger in a Strange Land''. In an October 2005 interview, Over The Edge CEO David Helgason called GooBall a "perfect showcase for Unity". Despite high downloads, the game was not a commercial success, leading Over The Edge to change its focus to engine development.

References

External links

*
2005 archive2012 archive
2005 video games MacOS games MacOS-only games Classic Mac OS games Ambrosia Software games Action video games Video games developed in the United States {{platform-videogame-stub Single-player video games