The Little Ball That Could is a solid marble platformer

Sega isn’t making new Super Monkey Ball games. And Marble Madness was in arcades more than three decades ago, but the marble-platforming genre lives on Steam in the form of The Little Ball That Could. Developer NaissusWorks launched the game last week for $8, and it has filled the sphere-shaped hole in my life.

The Little Ball That Could is the story of a ball that doesn’t have a heart. Because of that, the machinery that … lets balls into the “Haven” won’t let our hero past those pearly gates. At least that’s my read on the intro. Instead, your sphere gets sent into a trash-compactor pit with the triangles, squares, and the rest of the trash. Thankfully, you can roll your way out of those kinds of situations and into level after level of obstacle courses.