Videoball achieved the impossible: Getting me hyped about a modern sports game

The raw essence of sport

Imagine football, basketball, hockey, and soccer, all slammed into one. Crazy, right? Now strip away everything until all you're left with are the bare essentials: players, balls, and goals. That kind of spartan design is part of what makes Videoball so striking, both to look at and to play. Action Button Entertainment's Tim Rogers describes it as quite possibly "the perfect sport" in one breath, then a "party RTS" in the next. All I know is that I wish I had a build for the office, because this is the kind of just-one-more-round multiplayer experience that could easily consume hours.

The stark aesthetic recalls similar games like Sportsfriends' Hokra, with a playfield made up of nothing but simple shapes and solid colors. Yes, the most basic goal is to get a ball into the opponent's goal--but there's so, so much going on to make that happen. Colliding with the ball or enemy players will temporarily disable your sentient arrow, so the only way to make shots is to propel the ball with triangular projectiles (which will also stun your adversaries on contact). These shots can be charged up into huge warheads that slam-jam the ball--but hold your lone button too long, and your blast will instead become a square blocker that you can place anywhere.

All the 2v2 matches I played were intense battles of attrition, played first-to-10-wins with anywhere between one and three balls on the court at a time. Sometimes I played D by making a wall of blockades; other times I'd nudge the ball with weaker bullets before angling a power shot in attempts to score insane goals from midfield. Videoball may not look like much in still frames, but trust me: in action, it's like a shmup, strategy game, and NFL Blitz all in one.

Check out the following screens for more info!

Those blocks in front of the goal won't last long, since a few direct hits will knock them out.

It's all too easy to start panicking when the screen fills up with shapes. It's a good kind of panic.

Few things are as depressing as stunning your own teammate with a misplaced shot. Coordination is key to victory, as with any sport.

There are a variety of playfield layouts, of varying sizes, but they all fit on one screen.

The game recognizes certain streaks. A close-up, full-power shot to score is a Dunk; get three goals without opposition and you're On Fire.

You'll be able to tweak a plethora of options in each match. But nothing you do will make the music anything less than groovy.