Factory Balls

I remember playing Bart Bonte's games back in school. The Factory Balls series is a classic and I have much nostalgia for it! Unfortunately, it seems that I had rose tinted glasses, as though I remember very fond times with this series, I had a few little problems with this collection. When I was younger, each design was a head scratcher and I found genuine challenge in working out the order of operations for each ball. Nowadays, it was much easier to recognize the patterns and how to layer them on top of each other in a formulaic order to each tool and paint bucket, and the puzzle became less "how to I make this pattern?!" and more "how do i make this pattern without having to click the same 6 tools 100 times...?" In my opinion, a puzzle should not last long after having the "Eureka!" moment, as overstaying its welcome by forcing you through a long process after having already solved the puzzle in your head 20 steps ago isn't an interesting puzzle, just a
boring one. Not to say that I breezed through every puzzle, there were a few that genuinely did make me sit and figure out how to produce the design shown (mainly the ones involving grass and flowers) which I did enjoy, but only a handful. For the most part, I was just missing the original factory balls games, which usually had a much larger variety of tools at your disposal and more unique ball designs, as well as a fail state in which you would run out of balls if you messed up too much (which to my knowledge only existed in the first game, but I digress). On top of this, the fact that you had to click next between each level (whereas in the old games it would move on automatically), and the fact that the menus outside of levels had to animate every single time you clicked through them, just made the whole game feel very tedious, and by the end of it, it felt like a large slog and I wish that I had only played maybe one level pack a day instead of binging them all at once like I did. I might not have gotten tired of the formula by that point if I had done so. The spin off of this game which was based on the extra level pack from this collection, Boo, which I have also played and beaten, was even worse in this regard, as it only ever gave you the same 4-5 tools and the same 5 colors, which meant that you could make any pattern you wanted just by following a simple set of steps. In both Boo and this factory balls collection, the patterns were novel at first but quickly became formulaic after a time, and by the end, they felt less and less like puzzles, and more and more like long math equations (not particularly complex ones, mind you, just long ones). Still, if you pace yourself and use it more like a set of brain teasers instead of a large puzzle game, I feel it would be more enjoyable than how I had experienced it myself. It would probably work better as a mobile game if I'm being honest; solve a few puzzles while waiting for the bus or something, put it down, then pick it back up later when bored. Good game overall, thought quite a bit tedious.

A wonderful game that adds many more levels to the classic flash game that I'm so nostalgic for. I would love a level editor and sandbox for this game and I am a bit disappointed that this game doesn't use all the tools that the previous factory balls flash games utilized so if this game ever gets an update or expansion, I'd love to see that!

Really fun game, Ball design possibilities are endless!

I used to play these back in the game sites! It was a fun experience then, and it's still fun now! Although admittedly, due to my experience in puzzle games after all this time, it's a bit easier than what I felt back then, but that's quite expected.
Nonetheless, a full recommendation still from me!

I loved this game as a kid. I found this game while looking up the original flash games. Soo worth picking this one up. It's a good game to play while listening to videos.

Good puzzles. There are a lot of them and I still find myself wanting more, which is a nice sad problem to have.

The classic flash game playable again.
Puts a big smile on my face :)