This game is awesome thought can seem a bit easy provides a bit of challenge. One of the top games I have gotten from GGAOTD.

Thanks for the Game.

#14, Linda, I also get the memory access violation whenever I try to play it. Graphics and control settings have no effect on the problem, nor does DEP exception. This code is different from the earlier offering, but I don't remember playing the original--perhaps it had the same problem.

Please insert word "aren't" above in line " how sad they are that there aren't more games they can play". TY! :) Oh, now, who said duh? :)

Last night my internet dialup kept crashing while I was downloading this, but got it tonight, & I played it til now, I like it a lot! Kids will LOVE it, & they can actually play it! Do you know how sad 6 yr olds are that there more games they can use? They get left out of lots of kids stuff, too old for that or big for it, OR too little. This 1 is Just Right! :) THANK YOU again Alawar & GOTD team! :) :) :)

There's asloe another game like this called Balance, I don't think anyone's mentioned it so far.

I downloaded this early this morning and then played for a short time. I wasn't impressed, so I decided to wait until I had more patience and wasnt rushed. It is now later, and I played again. I think the graphics on this game are circa 1975. It is slow and choppy. While in theory, it seems like a fun game, in actuality in my opinion, it is boring and tedious. Although that may sound like a contradiction it isn't. I was frustrated with the poor quality, and felt little challange in the game, but was unable to play properly due to the poor quality.

I would rate this game 3 out of 10.

I think this is a great game..ty GOOTD!!!

Also I need to just comment about those that have nothing better to do then to complain that they didn't get the game they wanted and how a game is too childish or not thier style!!!!

I got news for those of you like that....you want to hear what it is??

THE WORLD DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My apologies to everyone else for my using caps...just had to vent lol

Fun to play good music...

HORRIBLE GRAPHICS...

The links that White Rabbit posted for Switch ball are dead. Search for it on google and you can find it, but be warned that it is only a demo version and the file is over 70mb compressed.

Whiterabbit, you are right, you only posted one link (my mistake), I was just noting, that the link takes you to the page to download, gives you two options, and both mirrors do not work. I apologize if my comment was a bit confusing earlier :-D Anyways, thanks for clearing it up, and I just went to the atomic elbow website, where there was a link pointing to ebgames, so now I can try it out. Thanks again for the info

Not the best Alawar game i've ever played, but a great little time waster

Hi Mapsking comment #31. That's odd because the link works directly from the one I posted above when I click on it for. Try Googling Switch Ball. I'm sure you'll find one that works, although there is something else called switch ball that will come up so add game to the search engine. I did only post one link not two though. Thanks for your second link also.

Everyone is welcome for the links, and Whiterabbit, just FYI, neither of the links you posted for Switch ball seem to work for me. Also, two other thoughts (kind of off-topic of the actual comments ABOUT THE GAME), there is a game called Ballance, which can be downloaded (demo) at http://www.gamershell.com/download_5937.shtml and whose developer page is located at www.ballance.org (check the download page for video clips and pics of the game) and if you like the open-source (meaning games that are developed for free), there is a really cool one (similar to Guitar Hero, except played with the pc keyboard called Frets on Fire. If anyone wants to try it, feel free to go to http://sourceforge.net and search for it. I'm sorry for the links, if they are not acceptable, as they are not related directly to this game giveaway.

Thanks

Comment #4 by Whiterabbit aka Stephen pointed me to a gameplay comment I made May 16 and got me to drag this bad boy out and have some fun. I liked this game when I downloaded it then. I still do. The comments still crack me up. I still hate that edge.

The graphics are still rough but today, I'm all about thanking GGotD and Alawar for reminding me about a game I had put on the back shelf for quite a spell. Repeating good games after a period of months is a great way to let newcomers see how some of us old timers have appreciated the work done by this site. We're willing to sift through for games that appeal to our particular interests.

But keep those new ones coming Alawar. You rock!



*******Whiterabbit aka Stephen******* (blush) thanks for tipping me to my own comment.

hello GAOTD!
plz take this game to download:peggle deluxe
that is very cool game
TY!

this is a little bit lame for adult playing but I guess for the kids that are just beginning to work these games on computers it is a very good start for them .the game is playable by all ages but will only hold my interests for about two levels and I am off wanting to do anything else . alawar holds about 32 % of my hard drive also . so it speaks well of this company they make good gamems for people to play

Cool game, but does it have to say "Loading" so much?

8/10, just for the frequency of those screens.

I would appreciate if you could get the game mahjong artifacts,you gave it away awhile back but I had some problems with my computer and no longer have it any more and I really enjoyed playing the game.
Thanks for your time!

Hi Carole, (and qb7894) thanks for the kind words......email me I always welcome contact with the world outside. I broke my back in four places while cycling to work; Sept 2005. I was hit at about 50+ mph, so am very lucky to have survived really. Thankfully I can walk, but have to take morphine for the pain. Complications have set in due to it going untreated (long story) for the first year.

Stephen

Hey folks I'm not looking for sympathy. The morphine seems to loosen my head a little lol, and I end up waffling on too much sometimes. :)

I do try and compensate by writing a usually, unbiased review for those who welcome it. Although I do realize there are a few who have problems with the waffling part, or think me a jumped up boor. But hey, ask me if I'm bothered, lol. :D

To the Game Giveaway team:

Thank you for allowing my often long and off the point comments to remain.

Have you considered allowing me to write these reviews a day or two early yet, so that I can test the games out properly and write a more in depth review for the community? I have asked several times but you’ve never replied to me. There’s a few times during the week that I now have hydrotherapy or other appointments in the morning, which makes it really hard for me to write a proper review early in the day.

OMG What a waste of time. You should put on the description that it is a game made for 2 year olds. That way some of us would not waste out time installing and uninstalling pieces of crap like this thing!

Thanks for the link Mapsking, much appreciated. :)

Please excuse all my previous ramblings. I’d just been awakened by one of those annoying phone calls that profess to be giving you something for nothing that you really don’t want, and will not take no for an answer whatever you say, except for slamming the phone down, which I rarely do because I think even in those situations it’s impolite. I was still in need of several hours more sleep, hence the disjointed comments I made earlier today.

I know this review is late, but when I did awake from my slumber I was in the mood, so thought I’d attempt a review of sorts. Firstly I would highly recommend you try the other marble rolling games that I suggested this morning, especially Switch Ball, which uses AGEIA PhyX properties (you do need the appropriate software and hardware to support this innovative physics emulator thought…still even without it the game is fantastic), and is graphically stunning compared to the rest of the marble games I suggested. Slick Ball, is also graphically sound, although to some it may be somewhat muted in color (It has a gothic look to it). Finally, Marble Blast gold, which is graphically inferior to the previous two, (unless you prefer the cartoon look) but compensates by having some excellent game play that will suit all levels, (Slick Ball is much harder even on easy, lol) and has the advantage that it is modifiable, with loads of custom made levels and skins to add to the game. Any marble fan should have all three (IMO). As for the rest, I’m sure if you are a marble fan you’d have those as well, lol. I found an interesting flash game that is supposed to be the pre cursor to Switch ball, although it looks nothing like it. You can of course play it free online by following the link below:

http://www.armorgames.com/games/crazyball.html

There are three game modes to play, survival, defense and two player mode; make sure your volume is turned down before you click on the link as the background music is loud. I can’t guarantee the above sites safety 100%, but while I was playing the game I got no warnings, or pop up attempts. I don’t have MacAfee’s Site Advisor downloaded on this new install of windows yet, but do run a decent antivirus and firewall program (F-Secure, which didn’t give me any indication that there was a problem).I must say though that you visit this site at your own risk. :)

Anyway, to my review:

Once activated and installed you are presented with a start up window that allows you to create your profile, or select another profile previously created and/or a previously saved game. The start button will be found on the window as well. Clicking on it will take you to a demo of the game, which shows you what each of the worlds {of which there are three; snow, green and fantasy) looks like. (This is only shown when you start a new game with a new profile). The graphic style is similar to Hamster Ball, Hamster Ball Gold and Marble Blast Gold, with it’s exaggerated cartoon style, and colorful levels. You can exit the demo immediately by clicking on Esc or let it run its course, which is less than a minute, before you are presented with the main menu.

The main menu gives you access to the options menu’s, the online score table, where you are able to post your own scores if they are good enough :) and the start button. There are two level packs, the original levels and the lost levels. Clicking on either will take you to a screen that allows you to choose from one of the three worlds you can play. However, in both level packs only the snow world is activated. You must complete these worlds to progress onto the next world. There are 120 levels in total. Once you’ve completed the arcade levels, the tournament mode will be unlocked. This adds extra playability to the game. There are also three levels of difficulty; Easy, which has no negative obstacles; Medium which has a spattering of negative obstacles and Hard, that is packed to the brim with obstacles.

I don’t know whether the lost levels are an addition to the stated 120 levels as I couldn’t find any reference to them on the web, but even if they aren’t extra, 120 levels is okay for $10. It should keep my family busy for several days provided we excluded all other games, which is unlikely, lol, so this is going to have long term appeal to us. Anything with a ball or ball’s is popular in my family, although thanks to the game giveaway team, I have expanded my outlook on games quite a lot since last December.

The game started off very easy, with small levels, (as you would expect) and as you progress these get steadily larger and harder. As someone above mentioned, the physics of the ball are not brilliant with respect to gravity effects, but using any of the controllers, that is the mouse, keyboard or game controller, or a combination of all three if you wish, the ball movement is easily controlled. There are area’s on the level that speed your ball up, allow it to jump as well as negative obstacles such as the frequently seen spike balls that will destroy your ball as soon as you touch one; which will cause you to lose one of your lives as well as put you to the beginning of the level you were playing. To end a level you have to touch the finish post with your ball. At the end of the level you are shown your game stats such as time bonus and points for that particular level as well as the total points so far for the game you’re playing. I didn’t play the game beyond level three as I have other things to catch up on, but it gave me a good idea as to how the game plays. I’m hoping there will be other power ups such as those you see in Marble Blast Gold, that include, time shift, flying and speed ball. You can go to an in game option menu by pressing the Esc key. This allows you to change some parameters such as the sound as well as allow you to save and exit the game.

The music is okay and does fit in with the game, although if you really think its bad you can change the music if you have a converter that will change your own sound files to ogg. There are six tracks for each level pack as well as two WAV files. The voice over is funny (IMO), but I’m sure there are those that will hate it, so just turn down the slider from the sound options menu for that particular sound.

I give this 8 out of 10, but I am a little biased. ;)

Check out the screen captures below:

All on one page:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Roads%20of%20Fantasy/?start=all

As a slideshow:

http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/Roads%20of%20Fantasy/?action=view&slideshow=true

To 1.

Try out hamsterball - its short but definetly the best marble madness clone ive ever played

to Mapsking(#15): Thanks for the link! I'll try Neverball.

I DLd this last time and played it for a while, but kept getting stuck! Not a game glitch, but my inability to maneuver well. I guess the arthritis in my hands keeps me from beating this one. It is fun though and a nice little time waster.
For those of you that seem to lose software from reformatting, hade you tried putting stuff like this on a seperate drive? I keep everything that I like on a different hard drive than my OS so when it crashes, I don't lose all the good stuff. Then I can also just take the drive out and put it in my next computer without having to transfer all my data.

@ #15-16:
Similar to Super Monkey Ball, I agree... but nothing quite beats the control or the fun of SMB2 on the Gamecube. After playing that, most anything else feels like a sad, sad shadow.

So many times I want to email you "whiterabbit"
and thank you over and over for your reviews.
Everyday when
I wake I go to giveaway and look for your reviews...
I so worry about your health and want to know just what
is causing you all your pain....but I don't want to
intrude on your personal life so here I sit just wondering..
and trying to get up my nerve to email you....
Carole from New England....

Just a correction, on my previous post, neverball is similar to Super Monkey Ball, rather than Marble Madness. Sorry about that.

to Mike (#1), there is a free open-source game called neverball, which can be downloaded from http://icculus.org/neverball/#download just choose neverball-1.4.0.zip, assuming you have Windows. There are also MAC OS X and Linux/Unix versions if you need them. Seems very similar to this game, it was a clone of marble madness as well. The main difference between this game and Neverball is that in Neverball, you control the ball indirectly, by "tilting" the playing field/floor. If you want to see a demo, you can go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhB7Klc2e0o Hope this helps. Also, FranP (#2), I installed it on Vista Home Premium (32-bit), and have not had any issues. I always install games into either a temp games directory in my download directory, or if I like them, move it to c:\games and never in the Program Files directory, and that *may* be why I have never had any problems running these games on Vista (Except Beezzle). One final comment, I don't know why anyone would complain about adding an icon to either the desktop, the start menu, or both, as these are simply a check box when installing the game. If you don't want them, simply uncheck the box, as it is with almost every installer out there. Uncheck = click click, done. A few other comments about the game, it plays in full screen mode for me, which I like, and the graphics can be made better by turning off the "cartoon" option in the game menu. Love the game, great work Alawar, and GGAOTD.

THANKS!

when i go to play game all i get is memory access violation, what does this mean and can someone help me please

ps....Alawar has over 35 precent of my harddrive may as well give them more....love to all alawar and ggotd

I am sich and tired this homemade Pong-like 3D "Games". This thinks just eats resources for no fun what so ever! And I am wide not the only one, who find´s 2D Arcade much Fun to play as 3D Arcade games!
It just sucks! Home made resource eating games! There are free Javagames better as this 3D crap all the time!

Never the less, thank you for anabling us thinks for free!!!

If you say so white rabbit I'll download. You are the top dog in my book. Always look for your opinion first. Hope your health improves soon. You are in my prayers.

Slick Ball:

http://www.terragame.com/arcade/1000000286.html

Sorry, one final comment before I turn in, I forgot to mention, there's also Switch Ball which is probably one of the best graphically, and another one with very basic graphics, but is still playable, called N-Ball. It vaguely reminds me of the graphics from Bullet Candy.

Marble Blast Gold that I mentioned in my first post also has an editor and fan base who have been working on a platinum version that has much improved graphics. (I’m not sure whether it’s been released yet). There are over a hundred fan made levels that incorporate all three level types (beginner, medium and advanced) to download for Marble Blast Gold.

Marble Blast Gold:

http://www.garagegames.com/pg/demo.php?id=15

Slick Ball:

http://www.garagegames.com/pg/demo.php?id=15


Switch Ball: (I love this one)

http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/switchball


Hamsterball:

http://www.raptisoft.com/games/Hamsterball/781/


N Ball:

http://ragdollsoft.com/nball/


Marble Worlds:

http://www.4pockets.com/product_info.php?p=30

(My son doesn’t like this one as he hates playing in a window. (It’s quite small) and I never play it so I’m happy to give this one away to who ever asks me first via my Email which I posted within the last 3 or 4 weeks. There are three different worlds, the original plus two expansion packs called space station and candy worlds. (total 300 levels) Once I’ve posted the game unlock codes I will be deleting it from my computer.

Amazing game. The graphics are splendid, and the gameplay has a great retro feeling. This is my new favourite Alawar game.

PS. #2 Yes, it runs in Vista (but that doesn't mean it will run for you! Vista is odd like that, runs for some but not others!)

Quite a good game today, graphics bit blocky even though you can up the resolution to 1600 x 1200, sound LOUD! This one will probably stay on the HD.

Just checked out Alawar’s site and discovered that this has been reduced to less than $10, which I think is a bargain. So if you miss today’s or lose it to a format, I would certainly buy this (just quickly checked the game out to see what it was like. It passes my not too rigorous game criteria for keeping, lol.

Later

I haven't the energy to write a full report today, (maybe later) but there really is no need to because if you follow the link below, it will take you back to the 16th May's comments when this was first given away. I didn't recognise it, but then I missed this one because I’d just gone into hospital. So this is a great surprise. When I reviewed what I'd missed, this was one I would have thought was a pity because my son loves marble style games and I've bought him several such as Slick Ball, Hamster Ball, Marble Worlds plus expansions and Marble Blast Gold, all of which have enough differences to make them all worthwhile buying if you love this game. Marble Worlds is a pocket style game, so the game appears as a small window rather than full screen.

http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/roads-of-fantasy/#comments


Check out most of the comments for a through review of this game, especially from:

Swan, Merril, JanW, Bobby, Keith Moson, Bonnie, Loki, count sheep and loads more people. Check Loki's for some negatives.

The main negative comments apart from Loki's excellent review (no sarcasm implied) seemed to be concerning the problems with the intro screen on dual monitors and the usual gripe about those easily deleted shortcuts that get placed on the desktop following installation; which is a very small price to pay for a decent game in my opinion. Still we are all entitled to our own opinions thankfully.

Despite not having tested this game yet (probably wont till I've had several hours more sleep lol) I think it's going to be a keeper as I know for certain my son will love it. I'm also not averse to marble style games, even if there is a gravity issue on this one. (see comments by following above link.

Sorry for the lack of a review today, blame my physiotherapist, lol. Thank you so much Alawar for so many of your decent games; and of course to the fabulous game giveway team for setting up such a project. My mornings are always brightened by the knowledge that I'm able to discover what is being given away. :D

Have a great week all.

I went to the neighbor to give him some beans from the garden and his son is playing this game and likes it very much. He is eleven

No I will pass as I am old and slow.

This one is pleasant - in the vein of Marble Maniac - despite ugly graphics.
It was already release by GGAOTD last year.
We would like to knoiw if it is Vista-compatible.

Sounds like marble madness... Has anyone any alternatives to this?