Mindscape Entertainment continues to milk its Virtual Life series with its latest entry, Oddballz. Playing off the success of titles like Dogz, Catz, and all of their sequels, Oddballz lets you nurture a wacky virtual creature from the egg to full-grown adult. Feed it grubz, teach it tricks and play games while keeping an up-to-date photo scrap book of its life. Kids will get a kick out of these crazy oddballz - at least for a little while.
The whole game starts with a selection of eggs, all neatly arranged in your incubator. You pick one out and set it on the screen, and out pops one of the thirteen included Oddballz. Watch it as it opens its eyes for the first time, and take a picture to add to your scrap book. You'll want to take pictures along the way as your creature grows and learns new tricks. They'll all be neatly stored for you so you can watch a slide show of its life at any point during the game. After the hatching process, your Oddball will be hungry for some Grubz.
Grubz are what your Oddball eats for a tasty snack. However, it's also your training tool for teaching the creature new tricks. Dangle a Grubz in front of your Oddball to teach it a new trick. If you like the trick, then reward the Oddball by dropping the grub and letting it slurp up the juicy bug. Grubz come in a variety of colors and flavors, and can be quickly retrieved from the dispenser at the bottom of the toy module. In fact, just about everything in Oddballz is as easy as a click and drag. To call your Oddball, just double-click on the screen and the creature should come running your way. To pick it up, hold down Shift as you click and hold on to the creature. Simply move the hand around the creature's body to pet and tickle the Oddballz, which also serves as a great way to reward the Oddball for doing something correctly. How do we punish the Oddball?
Grab the Sno-Blaster and aim for your Oddball. The gun will shoot a blast of goo that covers your Oddball and freezes them momentarily. After a Sno-Blast, you'll notice that your Oddball seems to sulk. However, don't wait too long before you get back into action. The creature should have learned its lesson and be much more obedient and responsive to your requests. If you don't like the idea of the Sno-Blaster, then there's also the Seismo-Ball. This huge, heavy ball is used to discipline your Oddballz by dropping it on them which usually breaks them into several pieces. Of course, they quickly get their body parts back together, but it does teach them that what they just did was a bad thing to do. Some of these bad things include ignoring your calls or kicking around the various toys. So what are these various toys?
First, there's the Transformer. Grab this special device from your Toy Module and take aim at your Oddball. The gun shoots a blast and transforms your creature into its "inner self". Each Oddball has a few different identities that it momentarily changes to. These can include anything from pigs to monkeys or even slugs. The Gravitron attracts your Oddball to it, and when it gets close the Gravitron shrinks the creature to a smaller size. This effect is temporary and you'll notice your Oddball slowly grow back to normal size within a few minutes. There's also an atomic ball, which you throw across the screen and the Oddball fetches for you. If the Oddball doesn't fetch it, you know what to do.
Next up is the Robo Pogo which bounces around like a possessed pogo stick. Your Oddball hops on the toy and takes a short ride until it jumps or falls off. Finally, use the Pop Box to get some tunes playing and watch your Oddballz get jiggy with the song. Each Oddball has its own distinct personality, and some won't like certain toys. You'll quickly pick up on these tendencies and take note of them in your manual or on screen in your Notebook. Even with these seemingly nice variety of toys to play with and tricks to teach, things can quickly become boring with a single Oddball. You'll probably find yourself switching between Oddballz often to keep things as lively as possible. Putting away an Oddball is as easy as picking it up and dropping it into the incubator.
The game comes with a variety of extras and has the architecture for expansion. You can download new Oddballz from the official web site, so you can expand your collection and have a new creature to train. The game CD includes a web fun pack, which includes a variety of Oddballz art for making your own web site. There's also a variety of desktop pictures to choose from while playing with your Oddball, or switch into full screen mode and they'll run around on your windows. Starter kits let you share Oddballz with your friends; however, it forces you to save them to a floppy disk which will leave some iMac users in the dust. The box also contains a Creatures CD, but sadly is only for Windows despite the fact that a Mac version exists. This is one of the huge thorns in Oddballz and a slap in the face to Mac users. If not for this oversight, the extras would round out the title to a great value package.
Oddballz takes the usual aspects of virtual life and adds a wacky side order of crazy creatures. Choosing from creatures such as the Norvil, Snowbo or 102, you nurture these wackos from newly hatched babies to fully-trained adult Oddballz. Feed them, play with them, turn out the lights and see how they respond. Take pictures of your Oddball as they grow and mature. If you can keep things lively with frequent swaps between creatures, then you can let yourself enjoy the experience of Oddballz.
