Videoball Review
By Omar (@siegarettes)
- Videoball
- Developer- Action Button Entertainment
- Publisher- Iron Galaxy
- PC (Steam), PS4, Xbox One
Videoball seems so simple you’d think it had effortlessly popped into existence. You play as one of two teams of triangles, and you shoot out triangles in order to hit a ball into the other side’s goal. Despite that, Videoball has taken two years of refinement until it’s hit this final release, and prototypes of it have been around since 2013. And for those tuned to the minute aspects of design, the work put into it shows. It’s in the ripple of the stage as balls bound off its borders, the fighting game-esque hit pause that occurs on contact, the timing needed to get off each shot. That’s the kind of ludicrous tuning that you get after two years of filing down the edges.
Let’s back up, though. Videoball is, in simplest terms, a game that takes liberally from popular sports and condenses their mechanics into an immediately readable, one button competitive game. It’s the immediate readability of something like PONG, with the available finesse of NBA Jam. Push the stick to move in a direction, tap or hold any button to fire varying shots to push the balls or stun the other players. This is where the finesse comes into play. The basic shot can easily stun opponents or dribble the ball, the second level will get you more distance by repeatedly hitting the ball, and a fully charged shot will punt the ball fast and far, but can be rallied by opponents back towards your goal. Holding a full charge for more than a moment, however, will create a square block that can be uses to defend an area you can’t cover.
Picking the appropriate shot for the moment, as well as choosing the angle, give you a lot more flexibility than it might initially seem. You’ll even see others develop their own playstyles around these actions. Playing with friends, we quickly fell into team roles, with our forward firing off quick shots to dribble the ball towards the goal, our goalie building up walls in the back, and me firing off mid charge shots to push the ball back and support our forward. These variants in playstyles even make it to the arcade mode, where various bots will model different behaviors and approaches in arenas designed to teach you how to deal with them.
All this is wrapped up in what I can only describe as a post-ironic tone. Videoball flippantly appropriates and mixes various sports jargon, all delivered in quick commentary through the announcers as you play. Depending on who you choose, the announcer either sounds disarmingly matter of fact (Jenn Frank, aka the voice of Super Hexagon), or like the absurdly throaty hype men they get for videogame trailers (Jake Glazier). All this backed by music that varies in style from “Korean MMO theme” to “NBA Jam OST” to “Neo Geo wailing guitar”. It all feels lighthearted, but appropriately HYPE. Even if you’re not someone who cares for sports, you’ll find yourself getting caught up in it, and yelling as you steal a narrow victory from an opponent. Even playing with only another person against the CPU, it wasn’t long before we were making calls in sports jargon, yelling for passes and tackles, and developing grudges against the digital personalities.
That said, this is a game that is 100% something to play with friends. I’ve had the luck to play it at games festivals around Chicago, and even with the noise it felt like the appropriate space to experience it in. That feeling of forming and taking on impromptu teams really channeled the experience of the arcade.
Additionally, while there are options for both 1v1 and 3v3, the 2 on 2 experience seems to be where it’s best tuned. There’s a frantic back and forth only present there, where you’ll have enough open space where you can’t cover it all yourself. It forces you to take risks and leave yourself open, where the other modes either leave too much open, or devolve into a chaotic pile ons. Of course, you can set your own house rules if you prefer, and there’s plenty here to mess around with to make up your own variants. The fundamental appeal of Videoball comes from the same place as Bomberman, or Towerfall. As much as I can go on about the individual aspects of it, in the end Videoball works best as an event to collect your friends around. And that’s definitely worth the hype.