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Perfect Balance: Harmony

by Eric March on May 7, 2009 at 12:35 pm

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(11 votes, average: 4.18 out of 5)

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App Name:	Perfect Balance: Harmony
Developer:	Ttursas, Ltd.	Version:	1.0.1
Publisher:	Ttursas, Ltd.	Size:	4.1 MB
Category:	Logic & Puzzle Games	Price:	$0.99/Free

Flash game aficionados — especially fans of physics-based ones — may already be familiar with the series of Flash-based Perfect Balance games, but both fans of the series and newcomers should enjoy the fact that it’s now available for Apple’s iDevices.

Perfect Balance: Harmony is the first in a trilogy of physics puzzles where the object is to create a stable stack by placing a given selection of shapes into the current level’s environment without knocking anything over or letting anything fall. Each level has environmental objects in it already — blocks, circles, platforms and whathaveyou that you can use to create your stack, either by balancing your pieces in the environment, hanging them off an edge, leaning them against something, wedging them into a tight spot, or however you feel things will best fit in order to let you get all of the pieces into a stable pile.

There are a handful of shapes you’re given, from Tetris-like L, T and I pieces, to triangles or oblong squared S or Y shapes, and even coins. The larger majority of the 80 levels within the game are pretty easy, often solvable within a 10 seconds or so, but you’ll periodically come across some real stumpers, especially at the later levels. While it does start off easy, and the highest levels do get pretty tricky, there’s an inconsistent degree of difficulty from one level to the next. You might hit a stumper that takes you a few minutes to figure out, and then progress into one whose solution is pretty obvious and takes only a few seconds to solve. While it does sort of serve as a way to give you a bit of a break from the challenging ones while naking you feel like you’re still making good progress, I don’t think it was intended that way. I was able to plow through all 80 levels in a matter of a couple of hours, on and off.

Despite that though I did enjoy the game, and I did stick with it enough to make it past the last level, so that’s saying something. One of the rather cool features of Perfect Balance though is that once you’ve finished all 80 levels, you unlock Bonus Ball mode. This lets you go through any or all of the 80 levels you’ve completed and do them all again, only this time, after you’ve placed all of your pieces, you have an opportunity to stack up to an additional 9 red gems into the scene — if you can. Although there isn’t necessarily one right way to solve a given level, games like this tend to have little replay value because there’s not much incentive to go back and revisit levels you’ve solved. Bonus Balls mode however helps to change that by upping the ante and letting you top your own achievments. The only minor problem with it is that there are some levels whose design is such that there really is no way to stack any extra balls into the scene.

Still, the feature is notable because it adds replay value to a game that otherwise wouldn’t really have any. There’s also a “Challenge” feature off the main menu — although what this really boils down to is a thinly-veiled “spread the word” button, because it’ll send you off to E-Mail with a pre-formatted form listing your game accomplishments and links to the game, and lets you send it to whomever you want to challenge to top your high scores. There’s also a handy settings menu with a rather nice feature: It lets you completely configure the block offset. When you tap on a piece to pick it up, by default the piece will appear some distance below your finger so you can see it well enough to place it accurately. You can change both the distance and position of this offset within the settings menu, which is great for people who may physically play differently.

Visually, Perfect Balance is clean and well-designed; it’s not “wow!” material, but it’s easy on the eyes, and there are some nice minor effects, such as friction sparks when something’s sliding or moving. The physics engine (Box2D, also used by iPhysics) works as well as I expect it to, though all of the objects’ physical parameters have been set such that they don’t bounce no matter how far they’re dropped. It’s kind of weird, but unimportant for a game like this. Overall though it’s well constructed. The sound is good, and there’s a nice soothing backing track, though it’s the sort of thing you want to set the volume low on or it starts to get repetative.

I quite liked Pefect Balance in the end, and while I completed all 80 levels because I wanted to get shots of Bonus Ball mode for this article, I really didn’t mind doing so, which speaks at least to the fact that it was able to hold my interest at least that long, and it still does with the new mode unlocked. Plus, more are planned in the series, so those who finish this one — in both modes — can look forward to more down the road to challenge them, and from what the author has stated, there will likely be more challenging levels in the next iterations of the game. In the mean time though, below you’ll find a video and gallery of the game, there’s a free lite version of PB: Harmony you can grab, and you can always play the Flash version linked in the first paragraph, so there are plenty of ways to get comfortable with this game before you decide if it’s worth your hard-earned dollar.