by Tim Peters

Created on: November 13, 2008   Last Updated: June 18, 2009

Sometimes a game is so horrendously designed that even a great gimmick can't save it. Take Somersault, for example. Somersault should be a great game. You draw little platforms for your critter to bounce on and keep him away from dangerous obstacles. In theory, even a bad game with a gimmick like this should still be fun. But Somersault completely wastes the potential of this gimmick with cumbersome controls and a repulsive presentation.

The plot to Somersault is a simple one: Bally (the aforementioned critter) has to rescue his friends from a villain. To accomplish this, just get him from point A to point B. It starts out easily enough. First you have to shoot Bally through a basket. A rainbow helpfully shows his flight path (not counting obstacles). The problem is, you're given so little time to change Bally's course that your platforms usually send Bally in the wrong direction. On lower-end computers that meet the game's minimum requirements, the mouse jerks along the screen, making it even more difficult to maneuver Bally. And it gets worse.

Beginning with the UFO chase in the second level, Somersault's difficulty ramps up from taxing to torturous. One misstep during this chase will kill Bally and force you to restart the chase sequence. Then there's the following level in which you have to guide Bally down a very dark tree trunk without going too far off the screen. It's so difficult that even the demo video on the game's website can't get through it without waggling the mouse around like it's on fire. Somersault's gimmick is put to the test, but it's simply not polished enough to compensate for the incredibly bad game built around it.

Sometimes it feels like someone saw how much fun Somersault could be and then threw in everything possible to irritate gamers. The game runs like a slideshow at its minimum requirements, which would be understandable if the game looked better. But the colors are too garish, the text bubbles grossly misuse the Comic Sans font, and that infernal tree trunk level is made even more unbearable by its ugly dark colors - when you can see them. The music isn't any better, consisting off repetitive drek you'd find in a bad rave, and the sound effects are almost non-existent.

Somersault has some unique ideas, but they mean little without a great game to put them in. Stick to the demo on the game's website or be prepared for a world of frustration. A disappointing 1 out of 5.

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