Jugglenoid

Juggling, like dancing or singing, is something that a lot of people do more when they're drunk. How many times have you been to a party to find a drunken bloke excitedly claiming that he can juggle any number of odd-shaped fruit roughly snatched from the host's fruit bowl? Sober though, juggling is rarely seen in public. Unless, god forbid, you go to a circus and actually pay to watch somebody doing it.

Which brings us, rather neatly, to Jugglenoid. Yes, it involves juggling and, yes, there's also mention of a circus, too, but don't think that by adding 'noid' to the end of the name of the game the developer has brought the hapless pastime kicking and screaming into the modern age. Sadly, Jugglenoid's gameplay is as worn out and threadbare as a pair of juggler's leggings.

The badly translated instructions seem to indicate that you'll be controlling a swing and throwing balls into the air to pop balloons. Begin a game for yourself, though, and you'll see that you're actually controlling a bizarre contraption that's moving left and right across the screen.

This 'swing' has two cups, each one holding a ball. Start the game and the first ball is launched up the screen until it hits (and pops) a balloon. Then it comes back down and, if you catch it, you'll launch the other ball.

Basically, this is Breakout, but with a juggling/circus theme. You clear one set of balloons and, as if by magic, another one appears, only in a different pattern. Occasionally, it's possible to pop a bonus balloon that gives you a power-up, but we're willing to bet our last juggling ball that you'll have tired of this amazingly poor game before the first one appears.

Slightly more advanced gameplay dynamics do come into play when you realise that you can bounce the same ball in the middle of the swing to launch it back up with reduced power – ideal for bursting the balloons near the bottom of the level. Also, if you press the '5' button while one ball is in the air, then you can launch the other one.

Still, as the gameplay is tricky enough to deal with when you're only controlling one ball, we fail to see any logical reason why you'd want two going at the same time.

We are more than prepared to be convinced that there's an entertaining juggling-based game out there just waiting to be developed by somebody, but this most certainly isn't it.

Frankly, Jugglenoid is baffling; we can't believe that with today's technical advancements, we're still having games like this forced upon us. We suspect that the mere mention of the word 'juggle' in the title is enough to put off most people, but we'd implore the rest of you to avoid this game at all costs.