I feel kinda silly making a forum post about this minor detail, but I wanted to know more about it and given this game's fairly generic name it is difficult to Google for any information about it. I'd also like to avoid as much spoiler-y material as I can until I beat it.

So I'm not that far into the game, I just got to the farm, but there is a part at the start where you jump into a lake and you are mostly supposed to go to the right. However you can also go to the left and there is a campsite with a giant ball thing and some pods which I don't know what those are yet. I'm assuming that the ball is some sort of powersource that maybe powers the pods. I'm assuming also that the game will eventually reveal to me a lot of this stuff.

Mostly what I wanted to know is if there is something I can do with that ball. It looks like you should be able to get up to it, or I was following the cable out of it and trying to yank it but the boy doesn't seem to want to grab the cable. Is this possible to do? Does this place have any significance? Ideally I want to be spoiler free, but my need to know means that there will probably be minor spoilers which I'm okay with.

You can do something with the big wooden pillar-looking thing on the ledge to the left of the ball.

The answear to your question is yes, there is something you can do with that ball.

I tried pulling it but the boy wasn't doing anything. Maybe I wasn't in the right position, or maybe there is something else I need to do. But that's cool. I was mostly looking for a validation that there was something you can do to get it and I wasn't just wasting my time with something that is just set dressing.

It's a self-contained puzzle and the ball is a collectible/reward. If you interact them all you will be able to do something special.

There are more of those balls scattered throughout the game. Finding and deactivating all them does something.

So I ended up getting it. I didn't realize it was gonna just be pull to deactivate. These are basically like the eggs in Limbo then I guess?

I didn't play Limbo (I know), so I had to look those up real quick. Without going into details, pretty much.