BurnBall by IMS has been in the App Store for a while now. But with the recent release of The 5 Fingers Games Bundle (which includes BurnBall, Chopper, Sneezies, Up There, and Blackbeard’s Assault) we thought we’d give it a look. BurnBall is based upon the 1990’s JezzBall game which is still available online and has been cloned for nearly every platform imaginable. Wikipedia describes the idea of the original game as follows:

JezzBall is a video game in which red-and-white balls, referred to as atoms, bounce about a rectangular field of play, or room. The player advances to the next level (with correspondingly higher numbers of atoms and lives) by containing the atoms in progressively smaller spaces, until at least 75% of the area is blocked off. One gains a bonus for eliminating more than 75%, which is calculated from the percentage over 75% that one manages to block off. One must do this while racing against the clock.

In BurnBall, the goal is similar. Move your character, named Roy, around the board to color in sections of the, now gray, world he lives in. Tilt your iPhone in all 4 directions to do this. If one of Dr. Gray’s robots touches you or your color band before you reach the edge of the screen, you lose a life. Color in 75% of the board to move on to the next level. Each level ups the ante by increasing the number of robots. A progress meter is located at the top of the screen showing how much more of the board you need to color. Roy can substantially multiply his speed for short periods by collecting burnballs which pop up randomly on every board.

BurnBall has 3 difficulty settings, Easy, Hard, and OMG. Easy gives you safe zones, where the robots cannot reach you, on 4 sides of the screen. Hard takes away one of those safe zones while OMG limits you to 2 safe zones and increases the number of enemy robots.

The AppSmile team likes the way IMS has included a story section on the Main Menu to fill you in on the history of BurnBall. The menu graphics receive an 8 out of 10 on our scale -- we think they could look a little less amateur. IMS has built a soundtrack and sound effects into the game. However, we found that the music only plays during menu viewing. If you’re wondering if BurnBall allows your iTunes collection to play in the background, the answer is a resounding Yes! We’re super happy IMS took that feature into consideration. Overall game graphics are good, but we wish we could tell that Roy is rolling. Maybe IMS should add a pattern to his shell. This would especially impress in BurnBall mode, which looks rather flat now.

With BurnBall, IMS gives the iPhone community a great opportunity to become addicted to JezzBall all over again!

AppSmile Favorite Features:

• iTunes Library able to play in the background with sound effects overlaid
• Comic-like Story available from Main Menu
• Funny and entertaining sound effects

AppSmile Recommended Improvements:

• If you lock the iPhone screen while mid-game, BurnBall will freeze upon unlocking
• The game needs better rolling motion graphics
• More characters, unlockable maybe?
• Give us some playing surface depth, hills and valleys would be a welcomed touch

BurnBall gets our AppSmile 4-Dimple rating: