Frumball... YEAH!!! by whositbop |  |
VIRTUPETS SPACE STATION - I've never played Zurroball or Gormball, but I love
Frumball and play it at least once a day. I highly recommend a trip to the Virtupets
Space Station for a game! Even though my Mystery Island Wocky, Dibblewiggie, felt
a little out of place there, we did enjoy ourselves. At the beginning, after playing
the lower levels over and over, I was really getting curious as to what lay beyond.
Now I can tell you that I have been as far as level 40. I think level 15 is very
hard, but I can't tell you more than that, as the levels were recently switched
and I haven't been able to revisit them all yet. Here are some helpful tips. With
these, maybe you can get up to some of the higher levels to see them for yourself.
The basics of the game are that you must use your intergalactic space bat,
which is a semicircle at the bottom of the game, to hit a small ball against
larger, colored balls in order to make the larger balls disappear. You get 5
points for each ball that vanishes. Power-up balls fall from some of the colored
balls as they vanish. There are also metal balls that do not vanish, but usually
act as obstacles. Some balls require multiple hits before they disappear. The
main challenge is that since everything is a round ball, it can be hard to know
which direction your ball will bounce after hitting something.
To help you get started, I will describe some of the power-ups and their pros
and cons.
Speed related power-ups - G, L, P:
Some of the more common power-ups are balls that change the speed that your
ball travels. A power-up with the letter L will slow your ball down and S will
speed up the action. I like to catch an L power-up when the colored balls I
am trying to hit are arranged close to the bottom of the screen. This gives
me more time to react when my ball bounces back to my bat. The P power-up does
the opposite - it speeds your ball up. I'm going to include another power-up
here - G. This will give your bat an invisible coating of glue. Your ball will
stick to the bat each time it returns to you. This allows you to slow down and
take a breath, or go get something to eat, etc. You can then reposition your
bat to aim the ball to hit a colored ball of your choice. After some practice,
you might be able to predict which direction the ball will go in.
Bat related power-ups - E, S, T:
These power-ups relate to your intergalactic space bat. A power-up with the
letter E will enlarge your bat. This is really great if you have slow reaction
speed. The drawback of an enlarged bat is that the ball can fall between the
bat and the bottom corners of the screen. The bat apparently does not close
that gap. An S power-up will shrink your bat to half its normal size. This is
trickier, but not too bad. A T power-up will give you a triple bat. Triple bat
is made up of three smaller bats, which makes the bat wider overall, but the
direction your ball will bounce off it is less predictable. The three separate
as you move them closer to the edges of the screen, but so far I haven't lost
a ball between the three bats.
Life related power-ups - X and 3:
If you are lucky enough to catch an X power-up, you will gain an extra life.
Even better is a 3 power-up. This gives you 3 extra lives!
Ball related power-ups - B, D, I, M:
I like power-ups B and M. B will cause an extra ball drop from the top to help
you hit the colored balls. The bad news is that you have to keep two balls in
the air. The good news is that if you drop one of them, you still have one left
and therefore don't lose a life. M will cause 3 additional balls to enter the
game! Challenging, but often very helpful! If you catch a D power-up your ball
will become almost invisible. There is another power-up which is light pink,
and it looks like it is a D. I think it may be an O, however. It does something
else and is not very common, so I will skip it. Power-up I makes your ball go
straight through the balls. I like this because it makes the path of your ball
more predictable and it eliminates more balls each time you hit it. It also
eliminates balls that normally require multiple hits with just one hit.
There are other power-ups, but they are less common and you can discover them
for yourself. Some give extra points, and one can take points away! Just know
that you can only use one power-up at a time. If you have an enlarged bat and
catch an S, for example, your bat will shrink. However, if you catch an X, you
will not lose the extra life if you catch another power-up afterward. Here a
few tricks that have helped me.
As I said before, the colored balls that are closer to the bottom of the screen
are the ones to worry about. When your ball bounces off them, you have to react
quickly so that you don't drop your ball and lose a life. When each level starts,
your ball will move slowly for a short time. Try to get the lowest colored balls
first while your ball is slower. When you catch the B or M power-ups, the additional
balls move more slowly. This can help you when more than one ball is heading
down and you don't know which one to save first.
Sometimes it is helpful to bounce your ball off the metal balls in order to
hit the colored balls. An example is in level 11, where all the balls are above
a row of metal balls. I start with my bat just below the right edge of the line
of metal balls so that my ball will hit the metal ball, bounce to the right
and up, bounce off the right wall, and then head for some colored balls. There
are other times when the metal balls will make your life miserable! An example
is level 15, where uneven vertical rows of metal balls make the path of your
ball very unpredictable.
I almost always avoid the P power-up if I can. It speeds my ball up and I
just can't keep up with it. Obviously, this would be different if you have a
slower computer or slower connection than I do.
One last hint is to try to get your ball to bounce around between the top
of the game and the colored balls, or between rows of colored balls. You don't
have to work as hard rebounding it and it hits ball after ball, racking up your
points.
Good luck! Dibblewiggie and I hope to see you around the space station!
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