Customer Reviews: Read 43 more reviews...
 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.
Balls compared to Jenga November 12, 2008
J. S. Meins (UK)
This is essentially Jenga with balls, which sounds like a compliment but which isnt. This might look better than Jenga before the game begins with its seemingly impossible tower of wobbling balls but it just cant match the originals simple but brilliant gameplay. The set up is too complicated, the capturing collar completely ineffective (meaning you spend most of your time trying to find your balls. A reinvention of the wheel. Poking balls with sticks is just no fun whatever way you look at it!
More like 'WHY-BALLY?' November 11, 2008
i wrote this (Bucks)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Parents - avoid this game like ricin poisoning!
Every time we played it those attractive colorful balls went flying across the room. We tried standing the game in a tray but it didn't help. The manufacturers helpfully include 4 spare balls in the box. These will last you approx' 8 minutes.
The game itself is a variant of Jenga with balls instead of wooden blocks. Players poke at said balls with pink sticks until the tower falls over. It sounds like fun. It ain't!
So what's wrong with Wob-Bally (apart from the obvious choking/tripping/lost ball hazards.)? It's far to easy to knock the tower of balls over meaning you spend most of your time rebuilding it. The manufacturers are obviously aware of this too and the instructions recommend that when the tower is knocked down the responsible player is 'out' and the remaining players rebuild the tower and keep going. Unlike in Jenga where the tower has a decent chance of staying up for a good ten minutes minimum (depending on players level of cack-handedness), Wob-Bally does well to stay up for 3 minutes tops.
Credit to the designers, they have developed a very clever mechanism for keeping the tower level, meaning that it can be played on most flat surfaces. But the darn thing just doesn't stay up once you start poking at it with sticks. And good luck finding all the run away balls each time!
Even if you love building things and hunting around floors on your hands and knees, this gets pretty tired pretty quickly.
If this all sounds swell to you, trust me you really are much better off with Jenga, a lego set and a good old fashioned game of 'hunt the thimble'.
You have been warned!
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