Stikbold! Review

Dodgeball is a strange game. You rush to beat your opponent to picking up a rough and rubber ball, take aim and throw it as hard as you possibly can at the people on the other side of the court. It’s the only time you are rewarded for violence at school, and where ganging up on the wimpy kid is considered ‘teamwork’. Stikbold! A Dodgeball Adventure captures the fast-paced and oddly satisfying moment-to-moment gameplay of dodgeball and adds in a twist of cartoon obscurity, making for a solid party game staple.

The tone is summed up from the moment you turn it on. The name, Stikbold!, fills the screen and as a frail, old man hobbles into the frame, he is instantly smacked in the face and collapses to the floor. As the trail left by the thunderous throw reveals, this is a dodgeball adventure, and clearly one that doesn't take itself too seriously. With an art-style similar to the blocky and angular world of Minecraft, Stikbold!, or the characters at least, wouldn't look out of place in its infinite universe, just on a day where it had forgotten to take its pretentious pills and decided to play dodgeball.

This attitude carries through to the gameplay too, particularly the premise for the albeit brief single-player campaign. In a world where dodgeball is clearly all anyone knows about, our heroes Jerome and Björn are preparing for the championship game when their rivals are kidnapped by the devil himself. Then, by following a trail of oil left by Satan, they arrive at various locations and have to beat numerous cliches of hippies, surfers and sea captains in order to save the day. It’s far from exciting, with mundane dialogue as beige as a digestive biscuit, but there’s something strangely hypnotic about the bright colours and brilliantly vibrant designs on screen.

It plays much like a top down shooter, using the left stick to move your character and the right to take aim, while throwing and dodging are mapped onto R2 and L2 respectively. The matches take place on circular courts ranging from beaches to oil rigs, with the player having to hit the opponents twice to knock them down for good. It’s a very simple to pick up and play formula, but one that is clearly lacking the intricacies to move it from good to great.

While playing the story campaign alone, it becomes obvious that Stikbold! is obviously in the court of couch co-op as opposed to single-player with every menu insisting on adding a player to your team. There is no dedicated change player button either; although passing between players switches who you control, when you haven’t got the ball, you can’t alter who you control which means you have to rely on the often clumsy and bumbling AI to have your back, drastically reducing the amount of the court you can cover. The same can be said for the plodding movement of your characters who feel like they are struggling through treacle; the addition of a sprint or dash button could have added to the intensity of matches, instead, as you meander to another side of the court, it gives you and your opponent too much time to recover and rethink attack.

12 story levels translates into just six locations as after each victory, every environment is rehashed in order for Jerome and Björn to take on a boss which changes the standard gameplay into something entirely different. As new mechanics are introduced, dodging becomes far more important, there is good reason to use cover and everything you first believed to be part of the level design becomes useful. Fighting an aged coach on the beach requires you to hold off waves of his lifeguards using jellyfish; the only way to stop a giant white whale is by pushing TNT crates into his gaping mouth and you have to avoid spray attacks from satan by hiding behind rocks. Forget everything you previously knew about dodgeball when fighting big bosses, it adds another, far more enjoyable and rewarding side to Stikbold! and one that transfers itself into the multiplayer side of things.

As a party game, Stikbold! gets everything spot on. With up to six players, it creates a court of cartoon chaos, creating micro allegiances as players gang up on one another or single out the weakest person on court. It isn’t until players have been knocked out that the best part of Stikbold! begins though: while you can’t win after being dismissed first, it doesn’t stop you from messing around with the action on court. Each level has three unique “out of court” mechanics. For instance; while on the park map, you can cast out a fishing rod which can catch players, as you reel them in, they become a sitting duck. And talking of pond dwelling animals, you can also become a swan, adamant on breaking arms, or a whale that knocks out players in one, fell flop. Each trap is entirely different and it’s a system that with time, could form lethal combinations to the point of people purposely dismissing themselves in order to fully manipulate the system.

Stikbold! does exactly what it sets out to do. It’s a dodgeball adventure that takes you from the insanity of a sport where you throw a ball as hard as you physically can towards an opponent, to the obscurity of a 1970s setting in a world where a dodgeball match solves every disagreement. It’s presented in similar style to Minecraft, with less blocks and more humour, and is hugely satisfying with large groups of peers. Though the single player side of things is lacking in solid gameplay elements, that doesn’t stop it from being a brilliant party game where the action is non-stop.