Depowerball is a 1-4 player arena brawler which focuses in on one key game mechanic. What if you could disadvantage the player in the lead and prevent them from being overpowered? Well, that’s exactly what you can do in this chaotic and fun battler, as at the end of each stage, the losing players vote off one of the winners’ powers!
A match in Depowerball has three phases to it. At the start of each battle, once each player has picked a character (bots can fill in slots), the first phase of choosing player loadouts begins. There are four types of abilities: attack, defence, movement and ability. Each has two options to vote on, and then the game uses a probability scale to pick a power for each of the four types. These are then assigned to the face buttons on your controller.
Phase 2 is the battle itself. There are two game modes in Depowerball. The first is to collect and hold onto an egg for as long as possible to reach a score threshold. It’s like a violent game of tag. The second is to collect eggs and feed them to a hungry dragon queen. Regardless of game mode, there are five arenas to pick from with their own layouts and a few unique mechanics, and you’ll get to work. Movement is quite nippy, and your abilities can be triggered fairly regularly with some cooldown effects in place. Often, players all end up on top of each other trying to escape like a rugby pile-on. Eventually, one does break free and scoring really kicks off.
At the end of each round, phase 3 begins. The winner scores a point, and the first to two or three points wins the game. Everyone who lost then gets to vote for which of the remaining powers the round winner has left to remove for that player. Do you stop them from attacking? Do you remove their shield? How about removing their teleport or sprint? The choice is yours, and the winner’s disadvantage is permanent. Depowerball works best on a 3-point winner structure because to get there, you’ll lose 2 of the 4 powers on the way. Hobbling a player from the ability to attack or run leaves them a sitting duck, as the only way to move at a decent pace is to jump everywhere, but they are now vulnerable to every attack. Given the post-hit stun animation takes a couple of seconds, that’s valuable time to steal the egg and score.
All of this plays out beautifully as good players are pulled back down to earth. Local multiplayer is great, and whilst the bots are a bit hit and miss, they can have a surge of intelligence and pull a blinding run sometimes. Depowerball also has an online mode, and servers are still going 2 years post-launch. They are empty, and you’ll need to arrange times to play with fellow gamers, but the servers work. They can host 4 players and a spectator for a livestream broadcaster to watch and cast the battles. I love that the structure is here for some competitive battles, even if the community is very small. My only critique for why that community is small may be down to the fact that there are only five arenas. They are fairly similar in set-up, despite having unique themes. I could also argue that whilst the depower mechanic is superb, it’s depowering the same 8 powers from 4 categories. Another 8 powers could have made the mix and match of things exponentially more interesting.
What Depowerball delivers is a solid, enjoyable brawling experience. Its smaller scope may mean you’ll play it in shorter blasts, but those blasts stay fun over repeated sessions. Bring 3 mates along and watch the angst as everyone turns on the winner to strip them of their cheese moves. Ah, those tears are delicious. Game on!
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