Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
Fun for a while December 4, 2008 josie82 (Fife, Scotland, UK) Wobally, as other reviewers have pointed out, is a twist on the classic game of Jenga - this time using brightly coloured balls instead of wooden blocks. The idea of the game is simple, using the sticks provided, each player must attempt to push a ball from the tower in turn. From there you continue until the tower collapes. According to the instructions, you are then supposed to put the tower back together and play until you have one winner. The game itself is nicely designed and fits easily into its container once you've finished playing. It's also bright, eye-catching and for a time at least, fun to play. Despite looking shaky, the game wasn't difficult to assemble and the plastic strap that was supposed to keep the balls from rolling away and under furniture, for our part, did work. The negative points were that the tower partially collapsed on several occasions rather than falling completely and we weren't sure whether we were supposed to continue playing until it collapsed completely or whether to reassemble. It was also unclear what was supposed to happen if you accidentally knocked out more than 1 ball during your turn. Once the tower did collapse, although easy enough to reassemble, it took time and effort and stopped the fun of the game for a little while. It is fun and I enjoyed playing it, however I haven't played it often and it's not a game that I would hurry to play again soon. Only 3 stars.
Ultimately pointless December 4, 2008 Mr. A. Sands (UK) "Play on a flat even surface" After doing this, watch as 100-odd balls roll away from me, under every item of furniture imaginable. This ball version of jenga is an interesting idea & concept, but the practicalities of the game undermine this completely. Balls roll, and on a hard even surface, they roll a long way away from you. Combined with the ludicrous rule that you keep re-building the tower until there is only 1 person left makes this game incredibly frustrating. A brilliant idea, but due to it's very nature, is impossible to pull off.
Jenga with balls November 19, 2008 CJ (UK) WobBally is clearly influenced by the classic game Jenga, the twist being that this time it is a stack of balls you are trying to keep intact, rather than blocks of wood. The game is well-made, bright and colourful. The idea is that players take turns to remove a ball from the stack, all of which are balanced on rings of plastic to form a tower. There are different variations in that the next ball to be removed can be picked by the player or by rolling two dice. In theory, it sounds like a great game. In practice, sadly it is not. The tower of balls is extremely wobbly, meaning that when you try to poke one of the balls inwards (using a supplied plastic, er, `poking stick') the whole tower tends to lean precariously. A reasonable amount of force needs to be applied to make the balls move (there is not the lightness of touch associated with Jenga here). Add these two factors together and you get a spectacularly collapsed tower and therefore game over. So games can last a matter of seconds or at best minutes. It's very frustrating, especially as putting the tower together again, whilst easy, takes longer than playing the game. Although in fairness, it's not as bad as some. I'm looking at you, Ker-Plunk. For younger players their attention is quickly lost when it becomes clear how tricky the game can be. My 7-year-old lost interest rapidly and would much rather play Jenga. Sorry to keep on comparing WobBally to Jenga, but after all that is what it is presumably attempting to mimic, and I'm afraid it doesn't pull it off. WobBally is just too fiddly and even perhaps slightly unfair to be all that much fun.
Great fun November 16, 2008 Kevin Roche (UK) WobBally is a sort of updated Kerplunk in reverse; a tower of balls are sandwiched between a number of rings and the object is to take it in turns to poke the balls into the centre without causing total collapse; last player standing is the winner. There are three games to play in the instructions: just poke whatever ball you like into the centre, roll a coloured dice to select the ball colour on your turn, and roll the colour and numbered dice to choose colour and level. The last game is the most fun, but for very young players, we had a three year old playing, the simpler game is best. Obviously there is a fair chance that the balls are going to gradually disappear - probably into the vacuum cleaner - despite the plastic "wall" that comes with the game and which surrounds the tower during play. Overall a fun game that even very young children can play.
Wobbally Party Game November 15, 2008 debbie8355 (Devon, UK) This is a good quality, well designed toy with an ingenious design and self levelling mechanism. Slightly smaller than I thought - it's only 18cm high but for the price it is still value for money and makes a lovely looking gift. A more interesting present than Lego or Jenga for an individual or family. I think it's best suited to older children 8+ as it's more difficult than it looks to successfully send a ball flying into the centre of the wobbly tower. My younger children also got frustrated with the time it took to rebuild the tower - 7 levels, counting out 14 balls each and 98 in total. There also seems to be a hide and seek element to this game as you hunt for 2 or 3 missing balls each time. Keeping an eye on 98 marbles isn't easy. You have to play the game on a hard flat surface which means the balls bounce everywhere when the levels crash down. Playing it on a hard table means the balls gain maximum bounce to all 4 corners of the room. The game doesn't play as smoothly as you'd expect. A lot of the time more than one ball falls out and partial collapses are common. Trying to hit the balls nearer the bottom of the tower seems to help the game last longer. It is fun and worth a try, especially if you like Jenga. There is no game quite like it on the market and I think anyone would be pleased to recieve it as a novelty gift. I don't think this will be played very often at our house because of the hassle factor of building it versus relatively short game play time but it's a game to try it out on all your friends and relatives if only to giggle at the look of concentration and performance anxiety on their faces.
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