A fun game that is well worth the price of $5.
The graphics on this game are nice. They're isn't much to it, but what is there looks like it should. The sound is excellent and adds to the experience. You can hear the weight of your marble, but the music is nothing to get excited about. Everything is pretty simple, but works well and adds to the overall experience.
The basic gameplay is similar to the Monkeyball series, but replacing the sometimes slow survival oriented pace of Monkeyball with a much more frantic pace. You have a jump, which creates a lot of possibilities as to how you can progress through the stages. There is also a small boost you can build up which will help you jump and also push away enemy marbles in multiplayer. There are also powerups which are essential to completing each stage. In addition to the standard format of finding your way to the finish some stages require you to collect gems before heading to the finish. These stages present particularly more challenge when trying to get a low time, but some people may prefer that. Death carries a very small price in this game, you can continue to retry any level until you've completed it, however death adds to your time and the games preset objective is to beat the target time. Initially this is easy, but gets harder as you progress through the difficulties. To those who are looking for more of a challenge, your quickest time will be uploaded to Xbox Live so you can compete for the best time against all the players in the world. You'll need to put a lot of effort in to get near the top.
There is a multiplayer also. The multiplayer consists of racing to collect gems, like the ones in the single player, over a given time limit. One annoying feature is that players can drop in anytime, including in the middle of a match. Of course since, they come in with a score of zero there is little chance they will be able to catch up. Other than that, Its a fun and worthwhile inclusion, but the single player is much more compelling.
So its a great game. You can get a pretty full experience of it from the Trail. If you're wanting to know the full version adds some much more intense stages, for both single and multiplayer, but if you like the demo you'll really like the full game.