Ballance
Fair · Short indie · 2024
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $5.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 4.7h 9.8h to 100%
- Value
- $1.27/hr
- Reviews
- 84% of 477 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last cut ended 11 days ago.
- Next sale
- Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
About the game
In this 2004 classic originally released by Atari games, you will navigate 12 sky-high courses. Each course is fraught with different obstacles that will block your path, slide your marble off course, or blow them right into the bottomless void below.
Minimum specs
Windows only.
The value story
20 discounts in the 3 years on record, a median of 50 percent off across all of them, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
Value puts it in the top 9 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 70 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 85 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Marble It Up! Ultra ($29.99, scores 71) beats it on value, while it beats Kiki ($0.99, scores 0).
More about Ballance
This site sampled 371 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 7 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written January 2024 to August 2026. That is more refunded reviewers than 8 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 693 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 72 have a larger share. Inside the two-hour refund window, 76 percent of the 263 reviews written there were positive, against 84 percent overall, and those are 58 percent of everything written about it.
4.7 hours to finish it, 10 to exhaust it. The completionist tail is 2.1 times the campaign.
What players say
A puzzle game that has all the right ingredients. There's no plot, no explanations, no cutscenes, no characters. You control a ball through checkpoints and reach the end of the level. There's 12 levels in total that start easy and very slowly build on more mechanics and features. The gist is that your ball transforms into different materials with vastly distinct behaviours. The default wooden ball controls the best...
1 more review
The idea is easy, you are a ball and must roll to the end of the level. You can change to a paper ball, a wooden ball or a stone ball, which each have their pros and cons. I loved this game when I was a teenager, but now I just find it tedious and frustrating. Was I more patient in my youth? I tried the free DLC level Twilight Zone, gave up, looked it up on YouTube and found out it was a good decision not to try it.
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Ballance scores 57/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/2000770/ballanceReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 29, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.