Preview by: Dave VanDyk

Do you find yourself scoffing at the prospects of yet another run-and-gun shooter being released onto the market? Do you drift endlessly from day to day, trying to find some way to fill the lingering void in your life until the day Portal 2 comes out? Do you secretly have dreams that involve smashing a gigantic, metallic sphere into anything and everything you see? If so, then this aptly-named up-and-coming indie puzzle game might be for you.

Based on a terrific amount of work exploiting the customizable nature of the Unreal Engine 3 tech, The Ball is an enticing romp through a mythical, long-forgotten realm where the only means to survive is by escorting a gigantic, magical sphere through the game's various areas, using its capabilities to solve and bypass obstacles and take out threats along the way.

The premise is simple enough; while working around a dormant volcano in Mexico, an accident leaves you stranded inside of an ancient cavern. Your comrades waste no time in telling you that you're effectively screwed until they can fly a new crane in to lift you out, and leave you with the advice that you should kill some time by exploring the area. In so doing, you soon come across a set of bizarre artifacts; a gigantic ball made out of gold and metal, and a strange skull-faced device which can be used to manipulate it. Using these, you find yourself taking the gigantic ball in tow and venturing further into the depths of a volcano to uncover the secrets of a long-extinct civilization, plunging you into a very desperate and unusual fight for survival. There are no guns in this game, no grenades, no conveniently-placed explosive barrels, only... The Ball.

And there's no question that action-minded gamers will find themselves rapidly missing their trusty shotgun when the action heats up in this game. While it's content enough to kick things off with a few basic puzzles which require pushing buttons and dealing with the commonplace spike and lava pits standard to any ancient long-forgotten civilization, it's not long before you find yourself besieged by hordes of roaming undead.

Combat in the game is an interesting trick given how you don't have any actual "weapons" beyond your magical control wand; you can use its charge-up "hammer" function to knock enemies down, but they'll quickly get back up again. To put them down permanently you'll instead need to maul them with your gigantic sphere, a process which is actually more challenging than it sounds thanks to some devious avoidance-logic for which the AI takes full advantage.