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!

BeyondUnreal is doing a little give-away of The Ball!

Okay, not everyone, but five lucky people will get a free copy of The Ball on Steam. What do you have to do? Easy, post a caption for a screenshot of The Ball in the comment thread. You can use the one to the right, or any other screenshot you can find. If you don’t use ours, please link to or post the screenshot you’re captioning.

So, to enter, let’s recap:

* Find a screenshot of The Ball (or use the one to the right)
* Think of a clever or completely lame caption for the screenshot (we really don’t care, and it won’t affect your chances of winning!)
* Post the screenshot and caption in the comment thread
* Wait to win!

And you can still vote for us in the IndieDB/ModDB Indie of the Year awards! If you liked our game give us a vote please!

Avault.com has reviewed our game, and they’ve given it the “Buy-it” stamp.

“It would be a true strategic mistake not to gravitate toward The Ball as quickly as possible.”

In other news, Fyrisvellir and Kaiser Tarkin have posted Secret Guides on our Steam forum. Check out their great guides if you haven’t yet found all the secrets in the game!

• The Ball Secrets Guide
• Video Guide

Haarlem, The Netherlands – 12 November 2010 – PC videogames publishers Iceberg Interactive and Tripwire Interactive, along with independent development studio Teotl Studios are pleased to announce that their first-person action adventure puzzle game The Ball (PC) is now available at retail outlets across the UK, Germany, France and Benelux.

Players that want to add a physical copy of The Ball to their game collection will be pleasantly surprised when they find retail-exclusive bonus materials included in the Iceberg Interactive boxed version, such as a bonus disc featuring the game’s soundtrack and a special postcard autographed by the entire Teotl development team.

The retail version of The Ball is also available for ordering in the Iceberg Webshop.