One of the more fun roguelikes I have played in recent memory. The art style and direction are amazing and the music is stellar. The game's presentation is extremely well done and has a ton of charm to it. The gameplay is pretty kinetic and moving around as a ball with weapons is pretty smooth albeit some hiccups with how levels are designed. The economy is pretty well tuned and getting ability, weapon, and trait upgrades never feels grindy, which is good considering how much stuff there is to unlock. Moment to moment gameplay is very fun, I just wish the "build" aspect was a bit more appealing. I never really felt like I had to think about what upgrades and weapons I wanted to get since there's clearly a hierarchy of what is better than what. Stuff doesn't "synergize" as much as they cram together to make something.

Overall though, it's a fun time!

Zoom around in a ball shooting strange robots; it really is as good as its central idea sounds! I wish each combat room had a little more variety and took a little less time to complete. Maybe I'm just bad, but after the first world the level pacing never felt like it matched the inherent speed of the game. I also wish the upgrades offered a bit more in terms of flashyness and had less of a focus on just pumping up the numbers.

I haven't finished the final world and boss, but I'm shelving it (for now) just because my pc gamepass subscription will lapse in a week or two and this isn't going to be a focus of mine to finish up before then. Really hope to return to it at some point and get all of the achievements.

Pinball meets Twin Stick Shooter in a shallow indie rogue like.
Go Mecha Ball is an overwhelming blur that does everything in it power to hurt your senses. Firstly if you are considering playing this game I highly recommend turning down the music, turning off motion blur and disabling screen shake screen. Not only are all these thing obnoxious and overwhelming the colour palet and texture design is god awful too.
Now for gameplay, it's actually not all terrible. I particularly like the class that focuses on being a pinball as there's something quiet satisfying about bouncing enemy's off the map. There is a fair bit of enemy variety which is nice, however I can't say the same for the boss fights. In total there are 4 main bosses (possibly a 5th if you 100%) that are very unrewarding and painfully easy.
Overall the rogue mechanics are quiet dull and with the game play thats average at best I wouldn't recommend.

I'm the kind of person who stays as far away from roguelikes as possible, but this looked cute and I just so happened to get three months of game pass via the purchase of a ROG Ally so I went ahead and tried it.

The gameplay loop is surprisingly good and sees you clearing out waves of enemies while turning your cat mech into a ball and bouncing about to deal damage and do some light platforming here and there. It is a lot of fun just rolling off a ramp and repeatedly landing on an enemy to wittle away at their health. The gunplay is fine, but it wasn't long until I found my favorites and simply ignored everything else.

Roguelikes are known for their brutal difficulty, but I was able to finish this one for the first time after three or four runs. Whether or not I got lucky...I'm not sure. That's one of many things I can't stand about this sub genre.

I really hope the devs will make another game like this with non-randomized encounters and actual level design based around the core mechanics. Like flinthook, I can't help but feel this is a great concept held back by being rougelike.

The moment to moment gameplay in Go Mecha Ball instantly clicks - Bounching, boosting, jumping at Enemy neck-breaking speed, weaving between bullets, pouncing on robots, is instantly very very fun, supported by smooth controls and a visually consistent style.
The skeleton around the gameplay struggles to support it - the roguelike aspects only allow for very limited build making, runs blend into each other quickly. The content is quite thin, essentially 3 Levels with 3 sub-levels and one boss each, that do not vary between runs. At least half of the guns have no reason for existing and do not feel meaningfully different from one another. Because of that I didnt stick with GMB for long, but give me a controller and let me bounce around a level and I m certain I d have fun again instantly

Nada melhor do que um jogo que se garante pelo gameplay, né?

É um enorme prazer ir melhorando a movimentação, conseguindo sustentar os combos e utilizando todo o potencial das armas e habilidades. Como um JOGO, Go Mecha Ball é uma aula de polimento e estrutura.

Difícil pesar se minha crítica ao RNG, que seria minha única reclamação, é simplesmente por eu não ser um jogador de múltiplos estilos de jogo ou se realmente uma build voltada pra HP e sustain acabam desbalanceando.

Você pode acabar triturando uns dos Bosses em 10 segundos mas simplesmente não conseguir finalizar a run por falta de HP/Cura...

Enfim jogão!
Fiz questão de platinar.

GMB is a very special game. It might look like a roguelike/lite but it’s really more of an arcade game with light roguelike elements. Being dropped in levels with random enemies, weapons, abilities and upgrades is all part of the game. But it’s more focused on keeping your combo max (for better currency and passive activation), efficiency, dancing around enemies and being able to do it with all the difficulty levels (there are 5 total). Finishing the game the first time is just the beginning. And doing it with 4 distinct characters along with the way they react to weapons/abilities/upgrades adds to the variety. They might look similar at first but you’ll soon find out otherwise. The game has 4 worlds with 3 levels and one boss each. Each level comes with 3 waves of enemies. The higher difficulties don’t just add more health and damage but more mechanics are also introduced such as the enemies being able to drop mines or heal others.

So let’s get to the positives. Firstly the gameplay is brilliant and something I haven’t seen before. Being a mix of pinball movement with twin stick shooting works incredibly well. It’s a delight and the reason why I remained engaged the entire 25 hours to 100% the game. The graphics are gorgeous and the animations are on point too. The bosses are fun and there are lots of different enemies with their own moves etc. The achievements are reasonable even with the hardest difficulty and clearing the game within 30 minutes. It’s the kind of game that doesn’t have a high difficulty curve. You can get good at it fairly quickly the more time you invest in it.

As for cons, I can mainly think of three. The music doesn’t match the visuals and gameplay. Or there is something weird going on with the mixing that doesn’t make the music shine as much. Other people noted that the levels look too similar and therefore add to the repetitiveness. I can understand this but it didn’t affect me as much because I was so focused on the gameplay. Not all the characters are created equally. Sprout’s speciality is abilities and the first one is unlocked after the first level, assuming it’s a good ability you want. Sprout also has low health. So you start very weak until you get some decent abilities while the other characters are just stronger and better right from the get go. Sprout needs some balancing. There are a few very minor bugs that aren’t really worth mentioning to be honest. And lastly, the next points are more of a feedback to make the game better. Having some sort of control over what weapons, abilities or upgrades you get would be nice. Think of re-roll or banishing stuff. Being able to see the stats that come with upgrades and having an overall stats menu for the character would be cool too. Right now you can only see the stats for your weapons.

GMB is one of those games that are rare. They don’t come very often. The mix of originality that works so well to the point that it feels natural. It’s the kind of game I question why we haven’t had something like it before. Not everyone is going to like it as much or care about what it’s trying to do. It’s not trying to be a roguelike/lite, it’s trying to be its own thing and it’s wonderful for it. I paid over €16 and think it’s worth it. I can’t guarantee that everyone is going to like the game but if you’re one of those who do, you’re going to LOVE IT and want more.

Game is pretty fun but it can get old quick. I waited to see how I felt about the other characters before I gathered my thoughts, but seeing that they don't really offer much of a change in gameplay is kinda disappointing,
A gripe I have is having to go back to the menu to switch characters when the game offers me a hub.

Pinball mixed with a chaotic top down shooting in a rouge-lite format sounds like it could be a really cool thing, but the lack of variety with the levels and enemies really makes the game feel way too repetitive. I could just be complain' about nothing.

Also I think the music kind of sucks lol. The shop track hits though

A decent action rougelike with a unique pinball/rolling mechanic but lacking the depth crucial to the genre.

The best thing about the game is definitely how good the movement feels. Zipping around taking out enemies while switching between rolling, shooting and abilities without taking any damage is satisfying.

Unfortunately, after finishing one run you have pretty much seen everything the game has to offer. There are other characters, upgrades, abilities and guns to unlock but they don't really change the way you play that much. The levels are fairly simple and don't differ much from each other.

The soundtrack is absolutely terrible and the worst I have ever heard in a game. I can only really describe it as noise. This combined with the sound effects and bad audio mixing make it very grating to listen to.

I had some fun in my short amount of time with it but I don't feel motivated to continue playing and unlocking everything.