The Little Ball That Could revives the dormant Super Monkey Ball genre

The Little Ball That Could is a game where you guide a rolling sphere through a dangerous obstacle course. If that sounds familiar, that’s perhaps because you are vaguely remembering Sega’s Super Monkey Ball series from a lifetime ago. The Little Ball That Could is out now on Steam for $8, and it could give fans of Monkey Ball and Marble Madness — the 1984 game that kicked off rolling balls through mazes — some of that difficult physics-based gameplay they crave.

Developer Naissus Works says that its game is the return of “marble platforming,” and The Little Ball That Could looks like a combination between Super Monkey Ball and Marble Madness. It has the visual style of Sega’s game with giant obstacle courses suspended magically in the air, but it combines that with the isometric camera view of Marble Madness. But the action is all about using analog or mouse controls to carefully (or aggressively) roll the ball where you want it to go.