Sloppy physics, missing features and buggy gamepl.
Gameplay (5/10):
Gravity based puzzle games are not new. They appear somewhat frequently on Newgrounds. Tractor Sphere's falls into the same idea of trying to manipulate a ball to the goal. Instead of directly controlling the ball or setting its course, you place the objects that attract the ball. Due to the game's sloppy physics, missing key features and buggy gameplay, Tractor Sphere's can be nothing but average.
Lets start with the good. The scoring system is well done. There are many bonuses the player can achieve by maximizing his performance. Some stages are a bit more challenging than others. The ramp up in difficulty was done well.
The physics in this game is just wonky. The player can't really tell how strong his Tractor Sphere is. Size does not seem to wholly reflect the strength (its really how long you hold the mouse down.) A visual meter would have been nice for precise accuracy. All that aside, the physics are very loose. I do not understand how I can put a maximum sized Sphere further down from a smaller sized one and yet the ball still has trouble getting over to the larger one. It also seems the ball has difficulty curving and orbiting.
Certain key features make the game more frustrating than fun. For example, instead of being able to reset the playing field whenever the player wants, he must hit the start button and then hit reset. On the same subject, once you hit reset your previous data disappears making you have to guess where you placed the spheres. This is a game of precise accuracy so it would have benefited the player if he could see ghost data of his previous placements to allow him/her to tweak his new placements. These missing features really make the game more frustrating than fun and have been used in most other "good" gravity games.
On the same subject, the only obstacles in this game were walls. There were no additional obstacles such as moving objects, items that manipulate gravity, hazards, etc. A game like this grows boring fast when there are not any new challenges after a certain amount of levels.
Lastly, the game is not coded well. If the ball bounces quickly in a small area, it will often go into the wall. This bug occurred the most in the "Polka Dot" stage. The author clearly did not take the time to evaluate and fix his game before submitting it.
Presentation/Graphics (4/10):
The game has a very bland "black and white" theme. The only animation is the blue exit object that simply rotates about its center. There just was no creativity or attempt to create a unique theme. Taking the time to enhance the backgrounds, adding animations to the ball, etc would have made this game more appealing to play.
Music/Sound (4/10):
What is it with people making extremely short loops and repeating them over and over again? I muted the song after about 30sec into hearing the 5-second clip repeat. When creating the spheres, the player hears a charging sound. However, the sound does not go hand-in-hand with how strong you make the sphere. In fact, the sfx repeats its self during the charging process. At least the sfx goes well with the player's actions.
Other than that, there were no other issues with the sound. There isn't a whole lot to do with sfx here anyways.
Overall (5/10):
This game is nothing but average. I wouldn't recommend playing it to the end, it isn't worth it. The author has a lot room for improvement to make his idea stand out among other gravity based games. As of right now though, there are too many wrong things with it that will make most people move on to the next game quickly.