Originally posted January 10th 2015 on the Seafoam Gaming forums

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Title: Sportsball

System: Wii U (eShop)

Price: $9.99

Release date: 11/06/2014

The main game/story

This is a unique little multiplayer party game, similar to Balloon Fight in some ways, but it mainly focuses on getting goals ahead of your opponent. Not really anything single player related in this game except for a practice mode, so multiplayer is where this game shines.

Graphics

It comes with a pretty simplistic 2D art style, which instantly reminded me of the amazing Guacamelee. You ride on numerous avian creatures, and each one of them looks nice with this art style. Even the knights that ride them are well designed, despite them not being the main focus in this game! Especially gorgeous in HD.

Music and sound effects:

While there are quite a few songs in this game, none of them really were memorable. However, they did help add to this game’s charm, and the sound effects compliment the soundtrack. Though most of the time I spent with this game was playing with my friend and using the announcer feature of the gamepad, which is why I didn’t focus too much on the music.

Gameplay

Sportsball is a local multiplayer game at heart, and it’s going to remain as such. There is no single player campaign, no online multiplayer, it’s instead meant for you to go and grab some friends and have them play with you on the same TV screen. While it does unfortunately limit the audience that can enjoy this game to an extent, what’s here is top quality and has a lot of care put into it. There are numerous modes to choose from, that change up how goals are accomplished or how many balls are in play. You can also customize these options to your liking as well before starting a new game.

The main goal of the game is to use your chosen bird in order to kick the balls to the goals in each stage. In some stages it’s easy to score points, while in others you’ll have to think a bit more and try to figure out how to score before your friend does! Each bird has different stats and some of them work better in certain stages than others, though it’s still made in a way so that all teams are equal and that there’s not “overpowered” color to choose that would break the balance of this game. Very simple, yet very fun and a good way to spend an afternoon.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Sportsball is an excellent multiplayer game, with lots of replay value for those who like party games. With numerous customization options, along with fun minor additions like becoming the announcer using the gamepad as well as saving replays of your matches to watch at a later time. (Sadly these won’t include the announcer commentaries you may have made during a match.), this is an amazing multiplayer experience and will definitely be a high quality game to play at parties and other big meetings you may have with friends and family.

However, at $9.99 it’s a pretty high price for a game like this, especially considering how limited the audience for this game is due to the rise of online multiplayer in games and the lack of any major single player modes. While I don’t think this game would work well online, I still personally think a single player mission mode of sorts would help make this game more appealing to people who don’t live with friends 24/7.

That being said, there was certainly a ton of care and love put into this multiplayer game, and I still strongly recommend it to those who have friends around often and want to have a good time.

I give Sportsball an 8 out of 10

Thanks to TOO DX for the review code.

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