Ok, mine shut down after 3rd level too. BUT I do like it a lot, except for that! 3D graphics aren't easy to make either, guys, & I haven't seen every breakout game but I like this 1 a lot better than the others I've seen.

When activated, it says it is activated & then you will get the owners website, which says that about the other Real Ball we got before, BUT YOU ARE ACTIVATED 1st!

This is just a cheap breakout clone. Thumbs down.

As promised I said I would report back on the situation with Nuclear Ball, one of the games given away back in May while I was away in hospital. I bought the game anyway as after trying the demo, I was impressed by its game play, much like it's predecessor, gem ball, by the same developers.

Several people who had obviously got into the game because they had gone as far as level 29, had said there was a glitch, which wouldn’t allow them to go further. I’m glad to report (finally) that the version I have from Reflexive works fine. Because of the disappointing arkanoid of today, I thought I’d give Nuclear Ball some further game play as I’m keen to progress onto the new release, Nuclear Ball 2. Anyway a few moments ago I passed level 29 with no problems at all and am now on level 31. If there was a real problem with the version that was given away, it is a pity as it is quite a challenging and interesting game to play. Maybe those who still retain a copy should try again.

The Game Giveaway team may well be giving away an updated version that works past level 29, :) sometime in the future, or even the new release, although I doubt very much we will see it right away as it is a quality game, and I’m sure Urse Games will want to see how the sales go first. :)

Have a successful new week everyone.

For those disappointed at not getting their daily fix of a game that can at least out last a day of playing, here's a freeware arkanoid that you will find better than that offered today. It is a 2D arkanoid, so you will immediately be given more of a challene anyway. Bear in mind that it is freeware so it doesn't have cutting edge graphics, it is still nonetheless a reasonable game. With the add-on packs that are available for it, you get around 300 levels of play. I did post this at the end of the giveaway period for aqua ball and meant to post it again today when I made my first post, but forgot, lol. Anyway, do check it out.

It's called Ultra Flexball 2000, The graphics are ‘cheap’ by today’s standards, that is 16 bit, but really for a brick busting machine, that shouldn't really be a problem. This is well worth a look see if you like arkanoids

Available from:

http://web.telia.com/~u92118145/index.html

De gustibus... downloaded and played it, but personally I liked Magic Ball 3 much more: Better graphics, more colours, more fun.

I downloaded and installed the game and it activated with no problem, however after finishing level 4 with 4 balls (lives)the game reverted back to the desktop.

After restarting the game and continuing on to level 5 from where I had left off...I only had 1 ball (what happened to the rest of them)?

The game took me back to the desktop again after the 12 level....again restarted and continued on until I got to the 20th level....like everyone else, I broke all the bricks and the game didn't recognize that all the bricks were gone....couldn't get any further in the game.

The game is very slow and far too easy...good for kids.

I certainly wouldn't waste my money buying this game.

I have to give this game "THUMBS DOWN"

Thanks to everyone for telling us about the dull lackluster appeal of this offering . It saved me time as I did not bother to download it. I already have magic Ball, Egypt Ball, and Robo Ball which were good offerings. If these three are offered again, down load with the assurance that they are fun.....Everybody have a great evening.....JohnnyBgood.

This breakout type game is way to slow and there is no option for faster or harder play.

also crashed on my computer - uninstalled

The game ends at level 20; it would seem is just a demo with no expiration time set. A real breakout game would have at least 100 levels. Played it through once and deleted it; the developers need a lot of work on this one if they want to charge $20 for it.

Fairly boring unless you have a lot of time on your hands and u want to see the ball do its own thing for 20 or more seconds every time you hit it. Egyptoid , which was similar concept, was 100 times more exciting. Sorry, thumbs down.

Alas this is the sad little cousin to Magic Ball 3. By the same developers that gave us Aqua Mahjong (need I say more). In Aqua Mahjong they claim the game is relaxing because you never lose. Well, it seems the same concept is here. The ball movement is soooo sloooow it become repetitive and boring. The graphics are crude and I kept getting this odd flicker at the top of my screen. I'm afraid I didn't have to wait to see regarding the problems of level 20. I stopped playing after level two!

I disagree with Halmanator (#45) about Magic Ball and would add that the physics in this game only work if the playing table was practically level. I also feel that Magic Ball had the original concept (with way better graphics) and this is just a badly done imitation. (Played on Windows XP SP2)

Exactly the same concept as "Magic Ball 3", offered earlier on this site, with the exact same major shortcoming; gameplay is so slow as to be completely unchallenging. However, this game doesn't have the graphical charm that redeemed "Magic Ball 3". The only nod I can give it is that the physics controlling the way that objects fall and tumble seem slightly more realistic than in "Magic Ball 3". Still, my bottom line is a thumbs-down.

Also, there are only so many "Breakout" clones one can play (hint-hint, GGOTD!)

No pilot error here - just a broken game. Installed on 3 different machines (mine, wife's and son's) of varying configurations (all XP Pro SP2, though) and on each of them it quits randomly after a few levels. Arcadebird definitely still has some work to do on this one.

The game was ok to waste a little time on, but it did seem to have some issues. The gameplay was kinda herky-jerky, the few power ups didn't last long, and it shut down on me twice. Magic Ball 3 and Aquaball are tough acts to follow! Thanks just the same GGOTD and ArcadeBird.

We've had EN0UGH of these Breakout! clones already. Don't mean to sound rude, and they are offered for free, but if we could get something free AND good/original, then that'd be great.

Not crazy about the poor graphics in this game. Would only let me play until level 20 and then the game never ended, just continued to let me hit the ball for 15 minutes without any objects to aim at. I finally aborted the game after the 15 minutes. The bonus icons that approach and your suppose to catch actually enable before you catch them. I personally cannot believe that they released this game to the general public since there are so many great graphic games just like this one (Magic Ball).

I'm sorry to hear that this version still has the same bugs as Real Ball had. I liked the game but eventually uninstalled because of frustration.

1. It would fail to see the board was clear. It seemed to be most predicable on a few levels, #14, for example, IIRC, if I used the rockets. Also, if I was taking "too long" and the game sent *helpful* rockets to help clear the board.

2. The game would occasionally just crash.

3. I could only skip up as high as level 12, IIRC, which sucked when I'd been working on level 40+.

Nuts.

The comments were enough for me to steer clear of this one. Thanks anyway GGAOTD. I think I will run off and play Magic ball 3 for an hour or so.
See ya tomorrow. Thanks again GGAOTD for all you do for us.

This was a cool Game. only draw back is that once you beat it, there is nothing only the 20 levels , on the 20th Level once you clear it the game just keeps running...no way to go or anything, I found that the only bummer, i think they could Maybe have a bonus boards, or fireworks or somethings to end the Game but just nothing. Oh well.. I enjoyed the game thought is was ok, maybe a 8 out of 10 ...because I love these type of games, and it was a nice birthday present for me today, it is a bit to easy..lol good for my grand daughtor shes almost 6 and I am sure she can have it beat in an hour.
thank you for the game as always, I for one don't mind the repeats.
Have a great Sunday

I think I have been spoiled by some of the better games offered here. The graphics are ok, nothing special and the game is a bit boring. After playing games like magiball, with amazing graphics, this one is not too thrilling. Had ggothd not offered such excellent games prior, this would have sufficed, but now, there's no turning back to mediocrity. Thanks anyway ggothd but thank you for all the other excellent games you provide.

A) The game crashes - VERY annoying!
B) Every time a new level starts, the ball starts playing straight away without me clicking the mouse.....(huh?)
C) There are hardly any bricks per level
D) It plays so extremely slowly that you can't miss the ball.
E) The graphics are crap (and I don't ususally care about graphics.)
F) There is something askew with the physics of the game.

I totally agree with whiterabbit (#28): the game runs so slowly yet the levels finish so quickly! There is no skill at all in this game. And I am an aquanoid and DX ball fan! And I usually love simple games!

The only thing different is the pretty reflections (Yay?!) I cannot believe people would ask for $20 for this game! It's not even worth it for free! But thanks anyway GGAOTD, I do appreciate that you try hard to get these for us.

Okay, I just have to post again after playing this for way too long. I rated it a 3 or 4 before I had played it very much. It actually gets a 1 from me. It shuts down for no reason about every 4 levels. I made it to level 14 before I just quit out of boredom. I kept hoping that it would get more exciting. Definitely THUMBS DOWN.

The mirror link resulted in an invalid zip file.
The main link worked, but the website at the end is wrong. Even though it is
http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/real-ball-2-1/
the text is the July giveaway.
Even so, the game starts, but died on level 4 for me.

Re: this game is not available - after activating. That message is on the website. I guess the website has not been updated. It has no effect on the game downloading. Just go ahead and perform set-up, close that browser, and pretend you never saw it. :)
As far as the game...I find it a little (ok, a lot) boring.
Magic Ball 3 is much more exciting and has great scenes. This game is a rather slow breakout. If Magic Ball 3 gets a rating of 10, Agua Ball is a 7 or 8, and this game is about a 3 or 4.

Mine also said that the giveaway period was over... hmm

What a pile of crap, do you guys test these progrograms before tossing them out to the world? Never would go past level 4, kept crashing back to desktop and it made me play level 2 3 times, completed, and kept bringing it back. Worst program I ever got from you guys. Usually I get great results, however this time it gets a HUGE THUMBS DOWN from me!

p.s.
For those having problems try using the demo download from Arcade Birds home site in combination with the activation module (activation first as usual). I had no problems playing 20 levels and when activating the game today tried the demo, which had expired and it was activated. Although I could only access the first 12 games for some reason from the start menu, there wasn't an arrow to move to the next set of boards.

.You know after playing this one for awhile I feel I am able to give a good honest critique of this game, "It is not a good game" to slow and it dosn't offer any thing different as with the other games like this, at least they offer a different look and way to do thenn this game does , scale of one to ten I give a 2 which is a little better then it deserves but did not want to split the vote. he he he ! and on the third tier it just shut down as if you had hit the exit button, not good. that alone is enough to give bad report.

I downloaded the demo the day we were given Aqua Mahjong. I played the 30 minutes you get and shot through over 20 levels. I love arkanoids, but this is not one I would buy for myself, but maybe for my 7 year old daughter. It’s one of the easiest 3D arkanoid games I’ve ever played. Although apart from Nuclear Ball, Nuclear Ball 2, and Incrediball: The Seven Sapphires and maybe Aqua Ball, all 3D arkanoids I’ve played are relatively easy compared to their counterparts, the 2D arkanoids.

I mentioned a few things about this the other day when Aqua Ball was given away. The ball is excruciatingly slow most of the time, so this combined with the fact that you can get through levels very fast will tell you a lot about the game. The boards do not have a lot of bricks on them, and although I personally don’t like power ups raining down on me, this is very sparing on the power ups, and they are limited to only a few types. These are:

Gunball, Shrink and Expand bat, Multi-ball x4, Impulse power, that seems to do nothing, (maybe slows the bat down), fireballs, that take the place of the rail ball, missiles and asteroids. The latter seem to be used as the welcome get rid of those last few bricks, but you still have to wait an inordinate amount of time for the meteors to appear.

The positive things that go for this game are a selection of around 20 screen resolutions to choose from. Bricks with very bright colors, although red and green figure a lot in the color scheme, which could affect the surprisingly high number of red/green color blind people that there are (my son is color blind for example). I also like the brick physics, and found knocking down the high towers of bricks caught my attention while they tumbled in heaps, and which apart from games like Magic Ball 3, Musikapa, and both the Shattera games are rarely seen in 3D arkanoids. However these are not enough to sell a game let alone make it interesting and fun to play.

I was very disappointed with this game when I played the demo, which for arkanoids is rare with me; I’m willing to give them a lot of latitude, when it comes to playability, but this one doesn’t cut the silk. For the brick physics alone I think this is worth 5 out of 10 and I think I’m being generous.

I’d like to thank Arcade Bird for allowing an extended life though. At least my daughter will find this a lot more playable than some of the faster arkanoids I have. Thank you also to the game giveaway team.

This game was only released about a week ago, so there are no images of it on the net yet apart from those you find on the home page and those above, so there are no links posted today. I started this review very late, and considering the response we seem to get at weekends with respect to the thumbs up and down as well as the comments these days (which would indicate fewer people checking the site out) I don’t think I can justify the time to take screenshots myself, optimize them then upload and label them to my photo bucket account as again I have the kids nipping around my heels lol. (Sorry)

The first Real Ball is marginally better because it has twice as many types of power ups, which are the nuts and bolts of arkanoids. However neither of them are worth the asking price of $19.95. I would suggest, (as someone did with another game giveaway), that both of these games be added to one of those boxed sets of around 50 or even a hundred arcade games that retail for the same price as this game. I bought one of those quite some time ago and got two exceptionally better arkanoids than these. ‘Wave Ball Root Revision’ and another really unusual one that I can’t remember the name of at the moment (I don’ have it installed)

Have a great Sunday rest. :)

not as exiciting as they said it would be, although it is playavble. The message from gawotd said it was not availablle, just ignore that and actvate it any way it will activate. I would not spend 20 bucks on this game ,but I have been cheezed up with good games over the last 8 or 9 months here so I am jaded to say the least, I may not be able to give an honest assesment of this game because of that.

#10 - totally agreed
Poor graphics is not my chief complaint, though.
What disappointed me most was horrible physics realization. It was so below acceptable that the ball just kept on going from one black hole to another on level 4, I never got to play it. Devs - plead guilty. Verdict: uninstalled after 5 mins into the play.
BTW, people do get sick of appz opening homepages on every install/uninstall/reinstall. If devs what to get some feedback, COME HERE AND READ. Period.

Thanks GGAOTD for offering, anyway. Hope you have something more valuable next time. :) How about some good stuff: Death on the Nile, Charma, Cosmic Stacker, Inca Quest, Jungo, Puzzle Detective, Fairies and the like? ;)

Despite the error message at the end of activation process your copy of the game could be successfully activated, just try to launch the game and see what happens.

Same as other comments, game download and install went fine. As soon as I started the game, it caused my PC to shut down and restart. Clicked on game again, it started up. Graphics and hidden aspects of the game are definitely simplistic and need much improvement, a shadow of the much better Magic Ball 3 and Aqua Ball offered here a few days ago. The game also just shut itself down 2 times over the course of 4 play fields. As a free giveaway, the game has some merit, but it has too many glaring problems to make it saleable.

it appears there are TWO publishers of a game called real ball.
Realore was the first one given away in july. this one is a different publisher and game has lower rez graphics than realores and has crashback issue that realores doesn't have.

Hi, after download the real ball 2 i received the message:

This giveaway is not available

Real Ball was available as a giveaway on July 6, 2007, this giveaway is not available any more. You can download the trial version of this software at http://www.arcadebird.com/real....

Don't miss a good giveaway again, subscribe now!

I'vnt download a prior file. Yr activate tool is wrong - sorry!

cu

hajota

The game downloaded and installed fine in XP. The game quits after levels 4 and 12 and has to be started again. It does save the game and continues after restart. At level 20 the game does not recognize that all the bricks are destroyed. The only option to stop the game is abort which causes the player to start at the beginning. I think that Arcadebird needs a bit more work on this one. I will delete the game until these problems are fixed. Thanks for your effort GOTD and Arcadebird.

To No 14, have you passed level 20? Same here as others, the game does not recognise the board is clear on level 20!

Giveaway team: the july giveaway was "real ball"[which i have]
this giveaway is "real ball 2" the activate exe thinks its real ball hence giveaway expired. please fix.
if the crashbacks aren't related to the software being unregistered then don't bother worrying about fixing it as the author needs to fix it. thanks.

I never got the original Real Ball game so there can't be a cache problem. I also clear my cache at least once a week. I got the same error that the game is not available. I saw the header of the window say Real Ball 2 but it still gave the error for Real Ball.

I guess I can't get this game.

downloaded fine, setup fine, played fine, low level graphics and design boring as hell, uninstalled after the 3rd level, Thanks Anyways Guys, Keep Up The Great Work!!

Not activated here!
Just bringing the message, that RB v.1 activating period has expired.
Same as Robgia.

#7 And perhaps not, I reinstalled XP (fresh install, reformatted empty drive) in August and I received the same response). I will try the mirror link and see if I get the same response after clearing the browser cache and maybe even use a different browser. And I thought that was why I used ccleaner and glary utilities.

BTW having just read the post previous to mine. I haven't downloaded this before.

Great Game!! Works great without any flaws. Must be user error on those other posts above.

I've just tried to download Real Ball 2 only to be told that it is not for download! It was offered in July 2006 but not now. What's happened here?

Thanks, GGOTD, but I'll give this one a pass. Reading the description makes it look like it's a 1992 k-car that a sleazy used car salesman is looking to pass off as a low-mileage Mercedes Benz. ;-)

Not an enjoyable game, keeps shutting down, poor graphics, repetitive and annoying soundtrack and the game is, simply put, boring and not fun to play. For those who like this type of game, myself included - do not waste your time downloading this game or you will have to waste even more time deleting it. Magic Ball 3, offered previously, accomplishes what the developers of this game failed to do - produce a far superior game with great graphics that is really fun to play.

To Gerard and others: You are trying to download Real Ball rather than Real Ball 2. Search Real Ball 2 instead.