Thanks to Projectile Entertainment for the review key!

Are you annoyed with how well life has been going? Has constant success plagued you every step of the way? Have you ever stopped and thought that today would be much better if you were faced with nigh-impossible tasks and lengthy, repeated failure? Or do you simply like rolling balls through obstacle courses? If you answered “yes” to any of these, Momentum is the game for you.

Momentum’s premise is simple: get the ball to the goal by rotating the stage around in any and every direction, with bronze, silver, and gold medals awarded based on the time you take to do so. This should be recognizable to those familiar with Super Monkey Ball or the infamous Rollgoal minigame from the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, though Momentum doesn’t limit your rotational ability – you get a full 360 degree playing field. While tilting the stage is the primary method of moving your ball, you can also make it jump as well as use the “brake” button to slow it down and give you greater control. Expect to keep that brake on most, if not all, of the time, as it’s your only hope against the suspiciously frictionless floors.

The ninety levels in the game are separated into three worlds, each with their own obstacle focus. The first world is standard, with only complicated, stationary structures impeding your progress. These stages tend to have the goal on the other side of the platform you start in, essentially making you traverse the stage twice; it makes the stages longer, but isn’t exactly engaging. The second world introduces moving platforms and laser beams, with the stages laid out more creatively than the first world. The final set adds blue fields that modify your ball, either by pushing you in a direction or removing your jump and/or brake.

What this all adds up to is an extremely complicated, horrifically difficult game. The courses are already designed to be as hard as possible, but the addition of moving platforms and especially the control-altering fields make some stages nearly insurmountable. Longer stages contain periodic checkpoints, with some giving you freely-placeable ones you can put anywhere you can stand still at for a moment, but every fall or laser-based incineration adds two seconds to your final time. Expect to fail dozens of times on the later stages, and don’t be surprised to only get a bronze time at best when – if – you finally succeed. It’s telling when the game, which unlocks new balls for use as you gain medals, only requires you to get sixty bronze, thirty silver, and twenty-one gold medals out of the possible ninety. Momentum’s Steam description often talks about its “Zen” atmosphere, but the only enlightenment you’ll reach is becoming one with your frustration.

For what it’s worth, the game controls as well as it needs to, considering the challenge mostly derives from fighting said controls. The stage and camera movements are customizable, both in terms of mirroring directions and sensitivity. The physics make sense, and the ball never acts in an unrealistic way. The ball’s handling will certainly feel anywhere from slippery to uncontrollable, but it’s by design, not technical flaw. It is worth mentioning, however, that the keyboard and mouse controls are rather clumsy. The mouse controls stage rotation when holding down the left button and the camera when pressing the right, making manipulating both at the same time nearly impossible. The keyboard has re-bindable controls, but limits you to rather imprecise command over both stage and camera. You can finagle a workable control scheme out of both mouse and keyboard together, but they still don't quite reach the level of control a gamepad does. To put it simply, there's a reason the screen after the developer logo shows an outline of an Xbox One controller.

The main flaws in Momentum lie not in its gameplay but in a few quality-of-life issues. There’s no way to check the medal times in-game; you have to quit out to the menu to see them. Some of the later stages get very convoluted, but outside of a wide-angle shot of the whole stage when you first load it up, you’re unable to move the camera away from your ball to look at where you need to go. When you fall, you’re treated to three seconds of watching your ball plunge away, followed by three more seconds of watching it respawn, potentially followed by even more waiting if there are moving platforms that need to line up again. It’s almost as if the game is reveling in your failure, and forcing you to savor it as well.

Momentum does try to keep it calm with its proficient presentation. Each stage is set to a soothing backdrop – a city at dusk for the first world, a skyscape the second, and a sprawling library for the third. You’ll be staring at your ball and its immediate surroundings for the most part, but both the various ball types and the ground are textured well and won’t strain the eyes; the metallic balls also have a slight reflection to them. The music is gentle and pleasant, though there aren’t a whole lot of songs; at the very least, it’s easy to tune out when you need to focus. The sound effects are realistic and aren’t very loud or distracting – the sound of your ball rolling along, clacking on the ground, and blipping out of existence are fitting and easily ignored when necessary. In short, there’s nothing in the game’s graphics or sound that you can blame when you fail for the fiftieth time in a twenty-second stage.

With no dialogue, plot, or characters to find, there’s next to nothing to worry about morally. The only exception is a stage titled “Escalator to Hell” – which is ironically one of the easier stages. If anything, the game is a solid test of patience and persistence.

If you don’t mind the brutal difficulty, Momentum is a competent, long-lived game that’s more substantial than it lets on at first. For the $9.99 it asks for, you’ll get over a dozen hours of gameplay just trying to complete each stage, let alone achieve gold medals on every one. Should you choose to undertake that impossible challenge, know that you’ll come out the other side with either the patience of a saint or the temperament of the Incredible Hulk.

-Cadogan