Funball

Funball is a video game in the strategy genre and published by Impulse Games, Inc. originally released in 1995. It is currently playable on DOS.

Funball is a fun and little-known 2-player board game by Jeffrey Belt, published by Impulse Games.

Your goal in this unique variant of checkers is twofold: reach the enemy's base or destroy all enemy balls. The balls have different sizes, and the bigger ones are better. When one ball jumps over another, both balls usually merge into one, and the color of the resulting ball will be the same as the larger ball before the merge. So if you can merge two balls of your color to make one larger ball, or 'take over' an enemy ball by moving one of your larger balls to where the enemy ball is. Balls that reach 'critical mass' will explode - this means that you can destroy enemy balls by moving your ball (regardless of size) over a huge enemy ball that already reaches critical mass. The balls will try to merge and end up exploding instead. What makes Funball unique - and quite ingenious - is the use of the board itself. Unlike chess or checkers boards, where each tile is just a place to place pieces, many tiles in Funball have different features that can help or hinder your game. Called 'bases', the special tiles range from cannon (which turns a ball into a cannon that can blast balls across long distances), glide (allows one ball to destroy another even if it is larger), armor (grows a cage around your ball, making it impervious to attack), bubble (turns your ball into a bubble that can float across the board - it must land on an empty base or else it will be popped), and many more. Making the most of these special bases is the key to winning the game. If that's not tricky enough, there's also an annoying spider that can randomly appear to lay eggs on the board - landing on these eggs makes your balls bigger. If you don't want this element of randomness, you can turn it off before starting the game. In addition to an intuitive mouse-based interface, Funball has help balloons for all commands, as well as a great online tutorial that teaches the basics (despite the misnomer of 'demo' on the menu screen). You can even use the 'Board Editor' to create your own board and fill it with special bases of your choice. The computer AI is more than decent in 'hard' mode, and you can play against another human player in 'hotseat' mode.

Overall, Funball is a fun and unique board game that deserves a lot more attention from board game fans, especially those who enjoy abstract board games with lots of rules and options. Highly recommended.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.