Nestled in a corner of the PAX East indie megabooth in Boston this past weekend was Videoball, the new project from Action Button Entertainment. The Oakland-based company was founded by Tim Rogers, well-known for well-crafted essays and critiques of video games you can find on Kotaku and Actionbutton.net. He also developed the mobile games Ziggurat and Tuffy the Corgi.
Videoball is basically a summation of everything Rogers has written about – that it's "easy to make a video game, but difficult to make a video game feel good to play." Videoball, based on time spent playing the PAX demo, feels very good to play with a very specific "gamefeel." Though there's been a set vocabulary for video games for a while, Rogers has offered a couple key words of his own in his writing like "crunch" and "friction."
"It feels good," Action Button programmer Michael Kerwin said, watching players enjoy the demo. "It feels crunchy." To help explain what he meant, he mentioned Treasure games, specifically the Sega Genesis classic Gunstar Heroes, as an inspiration for the way Videoball feels.
In Videoball, you control an arrow-shaped object while a second player controls a similar geometric doodad. Together, you must shoot triangles into three circles, or videoballs, that appear in the center of the court. Shoot the balls into the goals and you gain points. Get 10 points and you win, or just have the highest amount of points before the generous time limit runs out. You can charge your shots up to three levels: a charged up shot that sends the ball at a farther range; a super-charged shot that rockets the ball so it bounces off walls and other obstacles; and the final charge phase, a square-shaped barrier that you can drop in strategic spots around the board, like at choke points or in front of the goal. There is also friendly fire, so you musn't hit your teammate. That matters a lot because when you hit other players they can't move for a second. That could damn your chances at scoring or defending.
Between shooting multiple videoballs into goals, defending with squares, dodging immobilzing shots and timing charged shots, there's a lot to keep track of. But the gamefeel -- the crunch and friction -- is the big thing here. Your little arrow guys have a considerable weight to them and take a short while to build momentum. Think of Super Mario as his normal gait gives way to a dash as you hold the D-pad and a button together, or a race car revving up and gradually hitting top speed -- Videoball's arrows feel similar, as if they're rubbing against the surface of the Pong-like court. And when triangle shots connect there's a "crunch", or small pause, in all of the action, like the game gives your avatar a moment to say "OOMPH!" before continuing on.
There is no set release date yet, but you should be able to download and play Videoball this spring across a variety of platforms including PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Steam for PC, Mac and Linux.
Photo: Action Button Entertainment
