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The second game from Geert Verhoeff that's only meant to be played on a Steam Deck is Game With Balls, a collection of handcrafted mazes to gyro through. A demo is available for the game right now to get a taste of it.

Check out their teaser below:

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More about it:

Game With Balls! A little collection of handcrafted mazes for the Steam Deck, where you use gyro movement to navigate one of the balls through them. Are you the one with the best time among your friends—or even in the world?!

  • Over 40 levels handcrafted in the real world using real wood, drawings, and other materials, then converted for your digital pleasure.

  • An additional 10 challenges that not only test you on the time it takes to complete each level but also on other objectives.

  • Keeps track of your fastest times using Steam Leaderboards, so you can see if you’re the quickest among your friends—or the fastest in the world!

  • Collect all secrets in every level to not only be the fastest but also the ultimate completist.

  • Original soundtrack to relax to (or maybe not when you’re trying to beat your friends’ times).

Interesting to see, although probably only a small market for such a thing. Previously they released Better With A Friend, collection of hand drawn mini-games for the Steam Deck which only has 10 user reviews on Steam.

Game With Balls

Official links:

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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17 comments Subscribe

pb 4 days ago
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I remember when I got my first smartphone in 2010, and there was a game where you rolled a ball by tilting the phone. I was mind-blown. emoji
Ehvis 4 days ago
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That makes me wonder what it would take to port over Neverball to use the gyro. Thinking even further, could that work in VR with a gyro controller or even using the normal tracked controllers?
ShabbyX 4 days ago
Game is exclusive to Steam Deck but needs proton to run?!
Liam Dawe 4 days ago
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I don't see a problem with it using Proton. The same reason as always: a single build for the developer to test. And yes, that also applies if Steam Deck is the only target.

As always: support for the game is the most important thing, not what specific platform the executable was compiled for.
AL2009man 3 days ago
I checked.

despite what the title itself, and what the developer said: it actually relies on "ISteamInput" to handle Motion Sensors. it actually works on all Controllers that can support Motion Sensors, including Steam Deck and the likes.

for some reason: Geert Verhoeff doesn't use the Opt-in System to forcefully use Steam Input for all controllers.
Philadelphus 3 days ago
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OK, that's kind of interesting. This is the kind of thing that would've had me enthralled for hours as a kid. emoji
ScottCarammell 3 days ago
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I don't see a problem with it using Proton. The same reason as always: a single build for the developer to test. And yes, that also applies if Steam Deck is the only target.
Doesn't change the fact it's pretty goofy imo. It's like making a Switch exclusive by developing a game for Android and relying on translation layers, sounds like you're only overcomplicating the process and adding another layer of failure.


Last edited by ScottCarammell on 5 Aug 2025 at 5:40 am UTC
Geert Verhoeff 3 days ago
  • New User
Hi! Geert here. I can't recall ever saying it not using Steam Input for the gyro, but I can understand that it could be interpreted that way by me saying I will only support the Steam Deck at the moment. Main reason is that this is meant to be played on a handheld gaming device and at the moment I only focus on the Steam Deck for testing.

Coming to the second thing that was pointed out: Why use proton? On the one hand I want to maybe support other handheld gaming devices later that run Windows. On the other hand: why not use the power of proton anyway? I am a Windows developer by trade and as long as the game works as intended I personally don't see an issue using it especially for the Steam Deck (if I would make it for Linux desktop I would reconsider that).

Thank you all for the kind words and interest!


Last edited by Geert Verhoeff on 5 Aug 2025 at 9:17 am UTC
scaine 3 days ago
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Fond memories of playing Super Monkeyball on the last ever Nintendo console I owned, the Wii, with its gyro controller. I actually completed that game - probably the only rage-quit game I've ever completed, and probably also the last rage-quit game I ever bought!

Well, that's not true, cos I bought Elden Ring. But games like Celeste can definitely get in the sea!
BrandonGiesing a day ago
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So dumb to market this as only for Steam Deck when there's many controllers like the DualSense and Switch ones that can connect to PC just fine and support gyro, not to mention of course other handhelds since basically every single one has gyro built in also, you are basically just artificially limiting your audience even more than necessary for a game that already has a "limit" built in just cause a technology used. Also like in general, people on PC hate the entire concept of "exclusives".
elmapul a day ago
Doesn't change the fact it's pretty goofy imo. It's like making a Switch exclusive by developing a game for Android and relying on translation layers, sounds like you're only overcomplicating the process and adding another layer of failure.

linux dont have a good track record of mantaining backward compatibility and if we cant be sure we can play games made 6 months ago on a distro we cant be sure that an game written today will work 6 months in the future.

windows is a more stable target (mostly because microsoft dont evolve this shit) and while wine has to run on top of linux and may suffer from the backward compatibility issue, its a single point to fix, in order to make tons of games work, so we can be sure that someone will actually fix stuff if they break.

TL:DR targeting windows they can ensure the game will work on both windows and linux now and forever, while targeting linux it only can run on linux now and with no guarantee of it keeping working in the future.

that being said, they should totally make an option to run an native version instead, im not sure how mods gonna work.
elmapul a day ago
great to see the dev is here!

Geert Verhoeff, what game engine do you used? im asking because um curious about how good the support for linux is, depending on your ansewer we will know if it was a better call to rely on wine =p
elmapul a day ago
Fond memories of playing Super Monkeyball
i aways wanted to play this since i saw an video of it on... i guess it was cybernet.
for some reason never played, maybe its not as fun as i think


"So dumb to market this as only for Steam Deck when there's many controllers like the DualSense and Switch ones that can connect to PC just fine and support gyro"
the issue is, gyros might have a different calibration from controller to controller and device to device, so the game might be super fun as designed in some and quite irritating and boring in others, maybe the dev plan to support other controllers, but want to make an quality assurance first?

*im not sure about gyro, but other stuff like thumbstick definitely need calibration anyone who tried to play an n64 or gamecube game using an playstation generic controller know what im talking about.

hell even nintendo official ports had issues with this, ocarina of time/master quest on gamecube for example.

but i can see the issue with exclusives, sure it suck, but sometimes an controller have an unique control (eg: playdate crank, wii motion, ds screen) and i rather live in a world where an game exist but its locked to an device (for a good reason) than one where the game dont exist.

by good reason i mean , only a single vendor created an device with an certain feature, others didnd had interests, but if they did no patent would hold then back.
Geert Verhoeff 20 hours ago
  • New User
Using UE5 as that is what I use for work and while building for Linux is possible.. it is annoying to do.

Supporting only the Steam Deck is a quality assurance thing yes. Not only gyro, but also small things like resolution, sound of the speakers, etc. My last Steam Deck game runs fine on things like the Legion GO etc (and people are playing it on those devices), but that is not something I officially will support as a guarantee. Sure I will do minor updates if possible to accommodate, but I want to test it thoroughly myself before officially supporting a device/controller myself.
Altefier 13 hours ago
Oh man, I've really been wanting a game that makes full use of the Steam Deck's touchpads so bad.

I felt a game like Katamari would have been a perfect candidate for that. You can map the joysticks to the trackpads but I imagine it would be even better if fully developed with that in mind.

Or perhaps a game that uses the trackpads as drums. There's probably lots of interesting unexplored ideas.
Altefier 13 hours ago
Also like in general, people on PC hate the entire concept of "exclusives".

Well, I personally don't. Not exclusives in the vein of what this game's doing.

I dislike it when games are made exclusive for a platform when it can work fine on other platforms. But I don't dislike exclusive peripheral choices. If a game was made to be played with a Guitar Hero controller, you get a Guitar Hero Controller. If it was meant to be played with a Lightgun, you get a Lightgun. If it was made for Wiimotes, you get a Wiimote. If it was made for VR, you get a VR headset. If it uses a cam to use your video streamed body as the controller, you get a cam. If it's a Karaoke game, you get a mic. And so on and so forth, there's plenty of examples of games made for specific peripherals.

Games are an interactive medium, and as such the peripherals are the be-all and end-all. I don't think devs should be forced to support gamepad, mouse and keyboard for every game as that can be a serious limitation for creative freedom.

And also, it's not true forced exclusivity anyways. You can buy and install the game on any PC even when you don't have any gyro devices, and someone will probably mod in a way to use mouse support. Even Half-Life Alyx, a VR game, was modded to use mouse controls.
Philadelphus 6 hours ago
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Yeah, there's a difference between something being made exclusive to a single platform artificially as a tactic to pressure consumers into buying that platform, and something being exclusive to a platform because…that platform is the only one that can do it. It's like a flautist complaining that a Beethoven piano sonata is "exclusive" to the piano…well, yeah, you can't play ten different notes at a time on a flute*.

*As far as I know. No hate for flautists, it was simply an example that came to mind. emoji
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