Stikbold! Preview: Fun with balls
Stikbold is a game about dodgeball. But much like Pysonix’s Rocket League, which took the idea of a football game and added in rocket fuelled cars and a huge ball, or #IDARB, essentially a game of handball but with platforming elements, Scandinavian developer Game Swing has used the basic idea of sports and created something entirely different: a quirky, over the top action sports game with a heavy brawler element, all wrapped up into a bright and colourful package.
Stikbold tells the story of Bjorn and Jerome on the dawn of the Dodgeball Championships final; one that they lost the year before to their rival team. You are introduced to the game mechanics through a small tutorial training session from Bjorn and Jerome’s coach who is determined to win this year. The premise is simple, batter your opponent as hard as you can with a ball, while avoiding the same from your opponent. The winner is the team that is still standing. There are some tricks to learn, such as dodging and catching the ball, or shoving enemy players, but the gameplay is so simple it is very easy to just pick up and play.
The campaign (which can be played solo or by plugging in another controller for some couch co-op) follows our two heroes as they trek across the land in search of their opponent who was whisked away by the devil shortly after the tutorial. Along the way they meet various opponents that they must overcome. Battles take place in a variety of circular arenas, each one asking you to beat your opponent with a variety of thrown objects, a ball, a beehive or even a jellyfish. The difficulty starts to ramp up when obstacles are placed in the arenas. Early on it’s a minibus full of hippies, later it is waves crashing on to beach – you even fight a mad old whaler on an oil rig.
The story is daft, but amusingly so, and the cutesy, colourful visuals are vibrant and fun. Playing the campaign and beating each stage will net you a new character to play with in the local multiplayer mode which supports up to four players and two AI, split however you choose into three teams, or as a free for all. Players who are knocked out early on can still join in the fun by manipulating some of the environmental effects like chucking a whale onto the opposing teams.
So Stikbold is a lighthearted little sports hybrid game, then, easy to play and fun when played with a friend of two. It might benefit from some online capability as not everyone will be able to take advantage of the local only multiplayer, but the cutsey visuals and silly environments are certainly enough to keep you entertained for a short while. It’ll be interesting to see how the game turns out when it’s released.
