Michael Hogg   >>   Slowspace  |  Guitar Chord Explorer  |  Marble Challenge  |    |

Home  |  Play online  |  Download

You can play Marble Challenge online, embedded in a webpage as a Java applet.  Alternatively, you can download it onto your computer — this will make the game load much faster. This page contains full instructions on how to play Marble Challenge.  If you want to get started as soon as possible, you only need to know the control keys, which are listed below. Developing Marble Challenge has taken many hours of my spare time. If you enjoy this game, a small donation would be very much appreciated: Many thanks, and have fun! :-) Mouse and control keys Power-up overview The aircraft When to exit the game Game overview The power-ups Cash (your score) Other info   Mouse and control keys Move your mouse left and right to move the paddle.  Click the left mouse button to buy the selected power-up.  Make sure you keep your mouse cursor within the game, otherwise it won't detect your mouse movements. You will also need to use the following keys: Key Action   E, M, H Start the game on easy, medium or hard difficulty P Pause / unpause B Buy the selected power-up A Toggle "autobuy" mode 1 to 9 Activate the corresponding power-up X Exit the game, and keep your current cash   Q Toggle graphics quality (low/high) T Toggle display of timing information from the game's graphics engine Note that there are two ways to buy the selected power-up: click the left mouse button, or press B.   Game overview The aim of Marble Challenge is to get as many marbles as possible across the screen to the goal: while trying not to let any marbles fall off the bottom of the screen.  To do this, you have a simple paddle: Using your mouse, you must move the paddle to bounce the falling marbles. The game becomes more difficult as time progresses — the marbles are released faster, and your paddle gets narrower.  The "Difficulty" display in the corner of the screen shows the current difficulty level. As the marbles are released faster, more and more marbles will be active on the screen.  You can watch the "Active balls" display to see how many marbles are currently active.  There are also three other counters on the screen: These indicate the number of marbles which have been released, dropped, and reached the goal since the game started.   Power-up overview Power-ups modify the behaviour of the game for a limited time.  All power-up information is displayed at the bottom of the screen: The credit meter increases by one point every time you get a marble across to the goal, and is reduced by half every time you drop a marble! Each power-up requires a certain amount of credit to buy it.  Once you have sufficient credit for the power-up you want, click the left mouse button (or press B) to buy it, and the credit will be deducted from the meter. If you don't want to worry about buying power-ups, then press A to enable AutoBuy mode.  Power-ups will now be bought automatically, as soon as enough credit is available.  Press A again to disable AutoBuy mode. AutoBuy can be very useful later in the game, when the marbles are being released very rapidly.  However, AutoBuy prevents you getting the higher power-ups (eg. 7, 8, 9) until you've bought all the lower ones (eg. 1, 2, 3).  So you'll need to decide when to use AutoBuy, and when not to.   The power-ups There are 9 power-ups available: 1 Marbles bounce higher 2 Anti-gravity paddle 3 Double paddles 4 Wider paddle 5 Lunar gravity 6 Slow motion 7 Balloons 8 Laser forcefield 9 Three random power-ups! The letters on the power-ups should help you remember them. To activate a power-up which you have bought, press the corresponding number key on your keyboard.  For example, if you have bought the Lunar Gravity power-up, press 5 to activate it. Initially, most power-ups last for about 15 seconds, but as the difficulty level increases, the power-ups last for less and less time.  Power-up 9 is the odd one out — it always takes effect immediately, giving you three random power-ups for free!   The aircraft During the game, you'll occasionally see an aircraft fly over: This will drop a random power-up which you haven't currently got.  If you can catch the falling power-up on your paddle (not too tricky!), you can use it for free, without needing to earn credit to buy it! Very occasionally, the aircraft will drop a mysterious object: I'll let you discover what it does :-)   Cash (your score) Your score in Marble Challenge is the amount of cash you currently own — this is displayed as "Current cash".  Your cash changes when the following things happen: Cash Event –$1 Small marble released –$2 Medium marble released –$3 Large marble released +$2 Small marble reached goal +$4 Medium marble reached goal +$6 Large marble reached goal When a marble is released, your cash decreases.  However, if you can get that marble across the screen successfully, you will get back twice as much cash!  If you drop a marble, you won't get any cash back from it :-( Occasionally, you'll see a hot-air-balloon appear: This is a nice random bonus, and will give you $5 for free when it reaches the goal.  In addition, it will increase your power-up credit meter.  You don't have to do anything — just watch it float across :-)   When to exit the game Initially, the game is quite easy, and your cash will probably increase quite fast.  However, as the game becomes more difficult, you'll drop marbles more often, and your cash will start to decrease. When you think you've got the most cash that you're ever likely to get, you should press X to exit the game.  If you don't, the game will continue until all your cash has run out :-( Predicting the best time to exit the game can be tricky, but the "Max cash" display in the corner of the screen should help.  This shows the maximum amount of cash you've ever had during the game.  If you see that your current cash is becoming a lot less than your maximum cash, you should exit soon before you lose even more cash! Alternatively, it can be fun to let the game continue until all your cash has gone — eventually you can get several hundred marbles on the screen :-)   Other info The game should run very smoothly, at 40 frames per second (FPS).  You can check the current FPS value by pressing T.  If you find that the FPS is much lower than 40, press Q to switch to low-quality graphics mode.  This will increase the FPS by reducing the graphics detail (eg. no clouds, fixed sky).  If the FPS is still lower than 40, then your computer probably isn't fast enough to run the game smoothly.   The minimum possible gravity is achieved with the Lunar Gravity, Double Paddles and Anti-Gravity Paddle power-ups all active... watch those marbles whizz upwards!   Slow Motion appears to last longer than the other power-ups, but this is an illusion caused by the fact that Slow Motion slows down everything in the game, including the duration of the power-ups.  If duration is measured by the number of animation frames (rather than the number of seconds), then Slow Motion has the same duration as any other power-up.   I've tested the game pretty thoroughly, but there will always be small obscure bugs, which only occur in very specific circumstances.  If you believe you've discovered a bug, please email me with as much information as possible, and I'll investigate the problem.   Version history:   1.0.1  —  3rd Feb 2005  —  Fixed a bug in the "Max cash" display (previously, hot-air-balloons would never update the display, even when they should've done).  Fixed a bug in the "Power-ups" display (if the graphics mode was low-quality, the display wouldn't be blanked out when the game ended).   1.0  —  17th Jan 2005  —  Initial release. All Java code © 2005 Michael Hogg