- Disclaimer: Sphere Matchers is obviously not a real game (and just a collection of Titanfall 3 release date leaked (talk)'s ideas regarding sphere-matching/marble-popper games in general), nor the company Bobik supposedly formed after leaving the original forum as an owner and it should not be confused with the community of the same name.
Sphere Matchers is a marble-popper action puzzle video game with the same name as the forum, developed by Bobik Platz and published by Electronic Arts under EA Originals label. It was released on April 9, 2023 on Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4 and PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch, and it is a tribute to marble popper games like Zuma Deluxe and Luxor: Amun Rising, and a spiritual successor to MumboJumbo's Luxor series.
Plot[]
After the placement of Sphere Matchers flag at the sandy beaches of the Oddworld Island to claim this island, the Ugnius appeared and the Oddworld being overwhelmed by anomalous spheres. The player must stop the Ugnius and other spammers from causing more problems on the inhabitants of the Oddworld. The colors of spheres determine the types of spam.
However even after Ugnius and other spammers and trolls are banned and divinely punished, the battle is not over as the slop content cropping up in Oddworld Island and so the moderators of Sphere Matchers have to slay the enigmatic machine and its bot armies and users behind it before the significant environmental damage could be done on an island.
Gameplay[]
Sphere Matchers follows the concept of marble popper games as the objective is to destroy spheres by making matches with usually three or more same colors (ranging from 3 to 12 different colors), and combines the unique aspect of each other games into one. It introduced obstacles that causes spheres to be either destroyed before hitting the sphere train or it bounces off walls and a new derailment mechanic in which spheres can be thrown off the sphere train. There are 12 colors available, ordered by its first appearance; red, green, blue, yellow, purple, turquoise, orange, white, black, pink, brown, and grey.
Unlike other sphere matching games, Sphere Matchers uses deterministic seeded PRNG, in which the seed is assigned to each level and therefore, replaying the same level will have exact same permutation, both the sphere shooter and the sphere train.
The game's pacing depends on difficulty levels; on the highest difficulty, the speed and pacing is similar to Luxor Evolved and on lower difficulties, pacing is similar to Luxor 2.
There is a brief storyline involving moderation and spamming in general; these spheres are represented as spam and the player as the admin, shoots spheres/spam at the train to eliminate them, which is the equivalent of deleting spam off the internet.
Game difficulty[]
There are difficulty levels ranging from easy to hard. Some difficulty levels are special, which can be unlocked on beating higher difficulty levels.
Here's the list of difficulty levels in the game:
- Regular:
- Classic: No special spheres nor powerups and maximum number of colors is 9. Sphere speed is the same as Easy difficulty on Luxor 2.
- Casual: No special spheres besides wild balls and multicolored ones and no powerdowns. Sphere speed is equivalent of Normal mode in Luxor 2.
- Easy: Powerup/powerdown spawn chance is 75%/25% and there are special spheres. Maximum number of sphere types that appear at once is 15. Speed is equivalent of Expert mode.
- Moderate: Maximum number of sphere types at once is 18 and sphere speed is equivalent of Luxor 2's Challenge of Horus mode.
- Hard: More sphere gimmicks appear at once (number of sphere types in a one level is 21) and speed is somewhere in-between Luxor 2's CoH mode and Luxor Evolved.
- Insane: Slightly lower spawnstreak on all sphere types and powerups/powerdowns spawn chance is now 60%/40%. Speed is fast as Luxor Evolved.
- Special:
- hinether's Challenge: Play through 25 new maps unique to this mode with interesting but also very dangerous gimmicks and obstacles to face in these new maps
- Remixer Challenge: 100 best maps (with little to no gimmicks on its maps) to beat with ludicrous speed, faster than Luxor Evolved. Slightly higher spawnstreak (larger clumps of spheres of a same type) and fewer max sphere colors of 9 to make up for this extreme speed
- Stage's Challenge: No obstacle spheres nor powerdowns (though all good and neutral powerups are present at the same time) but the spawnstreak for all sphere types is zero, meaning it only form one group of each sphere type. Speed is fast as Luxor Evolved and it is basically a more difficult and faster-paced version of Challenge of Horus mode in Luxor 2 but with 12 colors (including wild and multicolored spheres mixed in)
- Bobik's Challenge: All 12 colors, plus every single special spheres appears on the sphere train. All powerups and powerdowns are available at once. Spawnstreak for all sphere types (barring from per-sphere spawnstreak) is the same as a hardcoded value in Luxor Amun Rising and the speed is equivalent of Luxor 2's Challenge of Horus
Game modes[]
Sphere Matchers has several game modes.
There are three categories of modes; the gameplay type dictates how it plays, game modes you're in and the segment type. Which is shown below:
- Gameplay types:
- Shooter: This is a basic type of marble shooter games. As the name suggests, the player shoots out the sphere at the train
- Grabber: The player must grab an existing sphere from the train before shooting them
- Clicker: Click the sphere to destroy, as long as the number of repeats is equals to or more than minimum collapse count
- Swapper: Swap the sphere to change the permutation and make matches to destroy
- Game modes:
- Classic: Basic game mode for marble-popper games. The player must either destroy the number of pushers or fill the progress bar, AND destroy all remaining spheres to win the game. Some levels have specific requirements to complete like "create X powerups/powerdowns", "destroy X of special spheres" and etc. rather than simply destroying many spheres as possible or reaching number of sphere pushers spawned to a certain number.
- Strategy: Sphere pushers don't move unless the player shot at the sphere train, thus eliminating time pressure and encourages strategic thinking
- Progressive: Survive the waves of sphere trains but the content, speed, and length of sphere train change over time though synchronized to the music
- Puzzle: The player have few spheres and are predetermined, spheres don't move and the objective is usually destroy all spheres on the board
- Onslaught: The path kept changing due to destructible obstacles spawning blocks the path
- Cross the Bridge: The objective to destroy all spheres usually on the top of the screen. There are spheres in the river that acts as obstacles and in some levels, static obstacles can also appear
- Boss: The objective of this level type varies; one such variant of this level type is kill the boss, which is usually blocked by sphere train, and the other is just one of any other regular level types but with extremely difficult objectives, absurd lose conditions, and/or much more dynamic obstacles
- Bonus: After the final level on each stage is finished, the player is proceeded to the bonus level, which the objective is gain points and/or lives as much as possible. Skipping or retrying the bonus level won't lose a life and completing the bonus level after retry won't give the special rewards.
- Placement: Only wild balls appearing on the path and matching two or more groups of the aforementioned sphere type drops powerups/powerdowns and three or more of them destroy large groups of spheres
- Precision: The player is equipped with special sphere power-up all the time and the objective is destroy all spheres with powerups only
- Sub-modes:
- Classic: Spheres comes from start path and goes to the end path as usual.
- Reversed: Sphere train moves from end to start instead.
- Relapse: Sphere trains coming out of both ends and the player must prevent the collision between these two black hole-containing geodesic spheres on each side
- Segment types:
- Segmented: Sphere trains are segmented into different pushers with certain length
- Continuous: Sphere trains are contiguous, the pusher is revealed once the progress bar is filled
Challenge Mode[]
Challenge Mode is a special game mode in which some restrictions are take place as a challenge. This mode has a dedicated level editor, in which players can create challenges and share with anyone.
All modes are available in Challenge Mode and there are few exclusive game modes and maps.
Survival Mode[]
Much like in Luxor 2, Luxor 3 and Luxor: Quest for the Afterlife, Sphere Matchers features a Survival Mode, which players have to survive for the longest run without spheres gets into the exit. Unlike in Luxor series, the Survival Mode features a rounds system where each round has pre-determined sphere types to spawn, much like in Bloons TD series.
There's a one powerup exclusive to this mode is ~Endgame, which is neutral powerup that ends the game as if the spheres breached the exit and gets the Last Hurrah bonus on destroying all special spheres on the path, and it appears once the Level 100 is passed.
Blitz Mode[]
Similar to Zuma Blitz, this mode is where the player have limited amount of time to score as much points as possible.
Special spheres[]
- Main article: Sphere (Sphere Matchers)
In addition to 12 colors, special spheres are spheres that has unusual properties, such as wild balls that make matches to literally anything. It can be either colored like bomb spheres or uncolored like glass spheres. Some spheres can help like wild balls and multicolored balls while others acts like an obstacle like garbage, multilayered and chained spheres.
There are four category of sphere types; the regular sphere behaves like as other SM games and it has colors, the colored special spheres can make a match like regular ones, but it has special properties, the uncolored special spheres that are normally unmatchable, but it can be easily destroyed by usually adjacent matches, and finally, power-up spheres that came out of the shooter and are normally not in the path.
Powerups[]
- Main article: Powerups (Sphere Matchers)
Powerups are items that can affect gameplay when collected, it can have positive, neutral or negative effects. However, these three categories are distinguished by symbols prepended and the color; a plus "+" sign and blue/green color indicates good powerups, a minus "-" sign and red color indicates bad powerups or powerdowns, and a tilde "~" sign and gray/yellow color indicates neutral powerups.
Powerups and powerdowns can be sidegraded, making it easier on some situations and more difficult in others.
Enchantments[]
- Main article: Enchantments (Sphere Matchers)
Enchantments are perks that alter the sphere train, the shooter and the powerups. It passively changes the difficulty, making it difficult on some cases while others making it easier on other cases.
There are categories of enchantments that can be used for specific part.
Sphere physics[]
Unlike in Luxor series, sphere train knockback amount is velocity-based; the velocity of attracting spheres determines the relative amount of pushback on collision and as velocity increases as the distance gets longer; longer distances between separate sphere trains (especially when a very long segment is destroyed) will produce a greater knockback as opposed to successive chain reactions as in Luxor series.
However, there are sphere train enchantments that alters the physics of sphere trains when equipped.
Sounds[]
Gameplay[]
| Audio | Description |
|---|---|
| When a sphere is grabbed in Grabber (Stoneloops-style) gameplay type | |
| Extra life (after getting more than 30 keys) | |
| Game over (when the player loses all lives) |
Level[]
| Audio | Description |
|---|---|
| Level intro | |
| When one of the objectives is completed in levels with multiple objectives | |
| When all of objectives in the level is complete | |
| Level completion | |
| When any sphere train breaches the end path | |
| On cross the bridge levels, when the trapped sphere pusher becomes too close to being crushed by its own sphere train | |
| End path breached with "Rollback" enchantment equipped. Also plays on bridge crossing levels where the trapped sphere pusher is crushed by its own sphere train |
Trivia[]
- Sphere Matchers use the same path system as Bloons TD 6, due to the game is being 2.5D and runs in Unreal Engine 5.
- Nintendo Switch version of the game heavily utilizes touch controls, but it still optional as the player can always use traditional way of controlling if they want.
- Console versions of the game uses gyro controls by default since playing a game like Zuma and Luxor is probably difficult with controllers than mouse-and-keyboard setup. However, the PC/macOS version also have gyro controls when plugged into the controller.
- This game has a lot of references similar to movie adaptation of Super Mario Bros in regards of old casual games and online moderation.
- Given the fact that game uses the aforementioned path system for sphere trains, some levels have paths resembling ones from Bloons TD series.
- Due to its fast-paced nature on some levels and game modes, Sphere Matchers could be considered a closest thing to Luxor Evolved 2 on some ways.