Videogames will never save my life. There was, however, an occasion where one saved my day. At E3 2012 I stopped by IndieCade, an off-to-the-side assembly of independently developed games, and soon found myself sitting on a white couch with three strangers. I was told we were about the play Hokra, a “minimalist sports game,” handed one of four controllers, and set free. As it turns out, a deluge of press conferences, closed-door demos, and all the bells and whistles synonymous with the industry’s latest and greatest were no match for a novel game, a comfy couch, and some new friends. When all of the dust settled, Hokra found its way into my Games of the Show.
Two years and one successful Kickstarter campaign later, Hokra has become part of a larger project. Sportsfriends gathers BaraBariBall, Super Pole Riders, Hokra, and the elusive Johann Sebastian Joust into a single $15 package. Each game is vastly different from one another – JS Joust in particular is unlike any videogame ever made – but they all share the same thesis; games are at their best when they’re social experiences. Each game is meant to be played and can only be played with people physically in the room; Sportsfriends rejects any sort of online functionality. Local multiplayer may not be the future, but, free of compromise, it’s surely the best way to experience this peculiar collection of games.
Super Pole Riders, in concept and in practice, is a madcap rendezvous perfect for a party. Coming from the same mind that brought us QWOP, it’s immediately clear that having no idea what you’re doing is about as much fun as actually taking the time to master its strange form of player control. In Super Pole Riders two teams of up to four people work to push a ball suspended on a clothesline to the opposing side of the screen. Armed with a pole-vaulting stick that looks straight out of a cartoon, you can either hold it up high to gently push the ball along, or manipulate the right analog stick in a way that gingerly mimics actual pole-vaulting. Vaulting yourself up in the air make jump-kick contact with the ball is the most effective means of ball movement, and, not coincidentally, equally effective at combating an opposing player.
To describe the scene properly, in Super Pole Riders you’ll usually have four people swinging giant idiot sticks at a seemingly impossible-to-hit target, all the while screaming hysterically at the chaos unfolding on screen. The gradual process where Super Pole Riders goes from a goofy dalliance to a legitimate test of skill takes about a half hour, but, strangely, the fun in playing it doesn’t diminish in transition. It all just looks so stupid, and when you’ve got two opposing players locked in a battle trying to push the ball with their stick and two more players executing vaulting jump-kicks at the same ball, Super Pole Riders transforms from a casual oddity into one hell of a competitive experience. Even when a game ends in a tie, Super Pole Riders has another insane trick up its loaded sleeve. It’s great example of how mechanics and presentation, even in their simplicity, can really work a crowd.
Compared to Super Pole Riders’ immediate call to adventure, BaraBariBall is more of a slow burn. Again, two to four players are placed against a 2D backdrop and tasked with a simple objective; don’t let the other team score a goal. In BaraBariBall goals are achieved by tossing a ball over to the opponent’s side, and then defending that ball until it manages to sink completely into the water. Meanwhile players are allowed to beat the living shit out of each other with a small variety of moves – moves that also happen to double as ways to advance the ball. I’ve previously seen BaraBariBall described as a lo-fi mash up of volleyball and Super Smash Brothers, and the comparison couldn’t be more fitting. It’s not explicitly a four player brawl, but BaraBariBall facilitates the occasion with welcomed frequency.
BaraBariBall actually goes a bit deeper than a quick glance might suggest. Each player can only jump a limited number of times before return to solid ground for a quick recharge. Managing your jumps alongside ball movement, not to mention the ravages of the opposing team, quickly forces players to start developing different bits of strategy. Differently arranged playing arenas further divide personal preferences, allowing BaraBariBall to succeed from a fun diversion to a heated battle. If there’s any complaint it’s that the game deliberately masks each character’s special move, which can create a gap between novice and seasoned players.
Johann Sebastian Joust, a mainstay a trade shows and expos over the last several years, is the jewel in Sportsfriends’ crown. Its novelty arrives from the fact that it’s a videogame that makes no use of a television, but its legend arrives from its construction as a legitimately sound game. Two to seven players are charged with the task at keeping a PlayStation Move controller level and free of fast motion. Moving the controller ever so slightly causes its light to blink, and jostling it too greatly results in a player becoming eliminated from the game. Players can move faster when the music (Bach by default, DMX anything on your hard drive by choice) starts to speed up, but too much activity will still cause a player to fail out. The object of the game is to physically invade your opponent’s space and cause him or her to lose authority of their controller.
When executed properly, a game of JS Joust looks like a slap-fight combined with the handcuff knife duel from the Beat It video. When played with strangers a distinct lack of aggression can make JS Joust a relatively docile affair. When played with friends, on the other hand, punches to the arm and unintended slaps to the face become a regular part of the game. If there’s any negative to JS Joust it’s that it requires a fairly decent space to be played properly, otherwise something in the living room is going to get destroyed. Also, as a game played in real life as opposed to the virtual realm, there’s also a distinct advantage in physical size. A friend who had 30lbs of muscle on my smaller frame, for example, inherently seemed to have better stability.
JS Joust may be most physically entertaining game I have ever played. Other motion games, from Dance Central to Wii Sports all the way back to the Nintendo Power Pad, rely on the player replicating instructed action. There’s little room for improvisation. JS Joust, by comparison, is an anything-goes brawl ripe for personal ingenuity. When a friend wedged the controller in his pants I responded by setting my controller on the table and going for an open-field tackle. He responded by making a dive for my stationary controller, knocking me out of the game. Anyway you want to play, including but not limited to bringing third-party projectiles into the field, JS Joust’s benevolent simplicity is ready to oblige.
Look at this way; nothing Sony did over the last three years along with millions of dollars in advertising and development prompted me to buy a PlayStation Move controller. JS Joust, after half an hour, got me to run out and buy as many as I could find. While Sportsfriends’ version of JS Joust can be played with DualShock 3’s (which vibrate instead of glow), Move controllers are undoubtedly the superior way to experience JS Joust. Hell, I paid more for Move controllers than Sportsfriends’ $15 asking price, and I’ll likely never use them for anything else, but the novelty and basic design of JS Joust makes it seem like a sound investment.
And then there’s Hokra, Ramiro Corbetta’s minimalist sports game. Controlled exclusively by four players, Hokra’s blocky complexion looks like something out of the Atari era but plays a bit like a simplified version of hockey. Teams of two control two opposite-colored dots, each hoping to either push or escort the ball, a smaller dot, into the opposing team’s goal. The longer the ball stays in the goal, the more the goal fills in with a deeper color. Completely fill the goal up and the game is won. There’s usually more than one goal in each of Hokra’s geometrically sparse arenas, ensuring an opportunity to score is always close by.
Perhaps more than BaraBariBall or Super Pole Riders, Hokra is especially friendly to coordinated teamwork. Passing the ball between two teammates is a risky maneuver, but absolutely essential to winning a game. Likewise, bouncing the ball off the wall and passing to yourself is another valid strategy. Even if the ball is inside the goal for only a moment, it makes progress. When the difference between winning and losing is who got the ball inside for an extra second, well, any progress is essential progress. Both BaraBariBall and Super Poll Riders made room for the occasional blowout, but Hokra always kept the score close.
The elephant in the room is that each of these games must be played in the same room; Sportsfriends can neither be played solo nor online with others. You can get by with two players for every game except Hokra, but maxing out with four (or seven for JS Joust) seemed like best way to enjoy every part of Sportsfriends. In the eyes of some the lack of online play may seem like an unnecessary omission, especially in the days where practically every multiplayer game features some measure of online connectivity. For Sportsfriends’ creators – not to mention those behind TowerFall and Samurai Gunn – a gathering of friends is the optimal environment to enjoy their games. They were not willing to compromise on an ideal style of play, and while that will surely lock out a significant audience, their choice is better appreciated as an honest commitment to a treasured past time. Having played and immensely enjoyed Sportsfriends in the company of others, I tend to agree.
