BurnBall: Surprisingly Addictive

At first blush, I wasn’t convinced that BurnBall had the stickiness necessary to merit replay in my oh-so-valuable free time. As it turns out, the deceptively simple yet addictive game play make for a great and fun way to kill time on the iPhone or iPod touch.
The hand-drawn, comic book feel of the graphics are by design, and go right along with the comic book back story to the game. In tilt-controlled BurnBall, you roll your Sonic the Hedgehog looking guy — named Roy — around each stage with the goal of recoloring the world which the evil Dr. Grey has desaturated. Sections of the stage regain color when you successfully complete a line starting and ending in colored territory. In sort of a classic snake game fashion, there are baddies in each stage that take away a life if they touch your uncompleted line.
Believe me, I get it — BurnBall may not sound like the game you’ll keep coming back to when you’re waiting at the Dr.’s office, or sitting in the bathroom… But there’s something to it, and it just hooks you. The replay value has proven to be fantastic in my experience. The more you play it, the more strategy you develop for getting higher scores faster. Like I said, deceptively simple yet addictive.
But don’t take my word for it. Try out BurnBall Lite for free, and if you find yourself going back for more, consider paying $2.99 for the full version. There’s even a Facebook page (with nearly 600 fans), where you can post your high scores and compete for prizes. I recommend you check it out, and join in the fun!
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.




I don’t think the lite version is available (yet?) in the US. When I click the link above iTunes gives me the message “The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the US store”. Also, searching for “BurnBall” only turns up the full version for me.
Hey Guys,
I’m the developer of BurnBall. Good news – I put BurnBall on special last night at 99c. I’ve also got global high scores in the final stages of testing, so that will be in an update very soon now.
Finally, there’s a competition running on the Facebook page with $100 in prizes. If you have the game be sure to check it out.
Kindest Regards,
Tim Haines.
p.s. BurnBall Lite has indeed been removed. After long discussions yesterday, we decided BurnBall Lite was hurting more than helping.