Hourences, the creator and designer of The Ball, has announced his new project: Solus – wwww.solusthegame.com. Currently in early stages of development, Solus is an Unreal Engine 4 singleplayer exploration and survival game that takes place in the same universe as The Ball. While a different game, it will build upon the same type of environments and atmosphere as The Ball.

Solus is a single player exploration and survival game, experienced in first person and developed in Unreal Engine 4. It is set on a mysterious and uninhabited alien planet.

With Earth on the brink of destruction you are sent to explore a distant planet. After 20 years of space travel you arrive but experience a catastrophic ic landing.

With your team members dead your equipment destroyed you have no ways of communicating with – or receiving help from an earth that might no longer exist…You completely and utterly alone.

To celebrate this announcement, and the recent third birthday of The Ball we’ve released a brand new and free one hour long DLC level for The Ball!

Named Quizaz, the level is the product of some of the design students class 2012 at the Swedish game development education FutureGames. Hourences set them up with access to the The Ball editor, and guided them into and through development.

Major credits to Anders Bergman, Jacob Antonucci, Björn Jonsson, Christoffer Näll, Claes Fornell, Ludwig Sjöstedt Samuelsson, Tobias Ekholm, Sebastian Contreras – and additional thanks to Peter Cornelius, Stefan Alfredsson.

Steam users can find this level in their Survival menu. Let us know what you think on the Steam forum!

Our new title Unmechanical has just been released for PC!

Unmechanical is a puzzle adventure that combines tricky puzzle solving, alluring exploration, and an engrossing atmosphere. Set in a fantastic world of flesh, rock and steel, your journey to freedom requires you to solve a great variety of puzzling challenges, and while it’s easy to pick up and play, later challenges may prove very difficult indeed.

Key features:

• Intuitive and simple controls, applied to a great range of interactions.
• A carefully created world with unique environments and an engrossing atmosphere.
• More than 30 unique puzzles, including logic-, physics-, and memory- oriented challenges.
• Uncover a dark secret through strange clues and fantastic events.
• Over three hours of puzzle-solving, exploration, and adventure.

Get the game now on Steam, GOG, GamersGate, and Onlive for less than 10$

As part of our Unmechanical launch campaign, we’ve also began selling a DRM free copy of The Ball on GOG.com and introduced a permanent price drop. The Ball is now only 9.99 USD.

Today, indie developers Talawa Games and Teotl Studios are thrilled to announce the puzzle adventure game Unmechanical, to be released August 8 2012 for PC and a couple of weeks later for iOS.

Unmechanical is an award-winning 2.5D side-scroller which combines tricky puzzle solving, alluring exploration, and an engrossing atmosphere.The game had humble beginnings as a student project and since then both game and team has grown.

“Unmechanical has been about taking on something for real and working our fingers to the bone to get it done. It’s our hopes and ambitions combined into this very personal, unique, and awesome adventure that’s crafted with lots of love.”Said Marko Permanto, project lead for the Unmechanical team.

Unmechanical begins with a twist of fate as you’re spirited away by a network of coiled pipes into a mysterious underworld. You find yourself in a strange environment that pulsates from mechanic and organic machinery alike, and your journey to freedom begins. Flying freely through the odd and fantastic surroundings,a powerful tractor beam lets you pick up objects and interact with the world.

Your quest for freedom requires you to solve a great variety of puzzling challenges, and while it’s easy to pick up and play, later challenges may prove very difficult indeed. On your adventure you might also begin to understand what it all means–The underworld may be more than it seems, the fateful descent more than just chance,and you might not be entirely alone after all…

For more information about the game, visit Unmechanical at http://unmechanical.net/

We came across this ad campaign currently running in Stockholm.

We couldn’t agree more!

That aside, PieMonster has been so cool to put together cover and disc art for The Ball! Check them out over at Steamcovers.com

Until Monday morning the 21st of November The Ball is part of the GamersGate Indie Compilation Vol 1 bundle! Six great indie games for just 15 Euro!

During this time you can also buy The Ball only for 75% off at GamersGate.

The Ball is 75% off over at Steam – Today only!

It finally is summer, so time for some summer sales! The Ball is available for 50% off at Steam.

And to spice things up some more, we have also released a new level! The Survival level Nextic

Smother your foes in black gold and ensure they see the light. It may be a crude punishment, but they’ll certainly warm to you.

We’ve written up a little post mortem on the things we did for the Potato Sack and the Portal 2 ARG. Explains what we did, why, and how we did it. Including some work in progress shots.

Thanks a lot for the great response we’ve gotten on our level! We spent a lot of time on it and it has been heartwarming for us to see our hard work pay off and be appreciated.

We have released a major DLC level as part of the Potato Sack!

Unriddle the mystery of our ~1 hour long new Portal/The Ball crossover level!

The game continues to be available for 75% off on Steam.

All kinds of weird things are happening on Steam!

For as long as the weirdness continues you can buy our game for 75% (when part of the Potato pack) or 50% (when bought individually) off. Be sure to keep an eye on our Twitter account TheBallGame during this event.

Two new reviews. JustAdventure.com has reviewed the game and gave it a B-

“The bottom line is that The Ball is a well made game and is fun to play when done correctly.”

And TheDailyGamepad.com gave it a 8.7

“Overall Score: 8.7 A Flat out Solid FPS adventure game that gives you a great challenging experience, as well as let you be creative and browse your locations rather then be linear in most respects.”

And Louis Koot finished his Dutch The Ball walkthroughs – You can find them at pcgames-walkthroughs.nl

PC Gamer has awarded us Best Action/Adventure of 2010! Thanks a lot! We are very honoured!

A masterstroke of minimalism, The Ball was the best gaming vignette of the year. There’s no dialog, sweeping cinematics or tacked-on multiplayer mode to burden The Ball—just a lightweight, focused, gameplay-driven short story. It benefited from this simplicity by giving us a campaign that felt paced and personal. As you kick the multiton marble around with your ancient Mexican gravity gun, it somehow makes the transition from object to character. You develop this subtle but strong relationship with the object—it doesn’t change or communicate, but it takes on the feeling of a pet following you through lava-soaked corridors.

All of our holiday sales have ended! Thanks a lot to all those who bought our game over the past two weeks!

2011 has arrived. We got some cool things coming up this year. You’ll see

The game is available for an amazing 75% off today/tonight only on Steam!. Five dollar for our game is an absolute bargain, go tell your friends!

Also our Christmas Contest has come to an end. The following 4 people won two Steam keys of The Ball.

Daniel Symonds
Robert Schulz
Liam Roberts
Michal Vilímek

Congrats!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone.

This discount is also available on:

And that is not all! PC Gamer apparently liked our game so much that they’ve awarded it “Action-Adventure Game of the Year 2010“! in their yearly GOTY awards. You will be able to read all about it in next month’s edition!

Manapool.co.uk have posted an interview with Sjoerd, our Project Lead and Creative Director.

Any puzzles or monsters that didn’t make it into the release?
We wanted to make an ancient robot that would come in and try to take the Ball away from the player. The idea was that the robot wouldn’t attack the player, but that he would continuously attempt to steal the Ball from the player, and that you thus had to stop him from doing so, or trick him to move some other kind of object instead.

We’ve made it to the top 100 over at IndieDB.com. If you liked our game vote for us! Seven more days worth of voting left to go!

Our 50% off weekend has come and gone. Thanks a lot to everyone who bought a copy!

This discount is also available on:

Some more reviews, including our first perfect score!

Also the Swedish site chabrall.com is holding a contest. Three copies will be given away, to the three best entries.

Det är alltså en tävling som gäller och reglerna är enkla. Öppna dina sinnen och låt kreativiteten flöda. Temat för tävlingen är “boll” och du får Fota, “Photoshopa“, måla eller vad du vill göra. Du lämnar ditt bidrag till oss genom att maila till the_ball@chabrall.com och helt enkelt bifogar bilden. De 3 bästa bidragen vinner såklart äran av att vara bäst, men också var sitt exemplar av spelet. Tävlingen kommer att hålla på till och med söndagen den 12:e december och vinnarna presenteras veckan efter. Så använd er fantasi och var med och tävla!