What would you get if Pong and Foosball had a love child, Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball would be somewhere close to the mark. It is a clever spin on both games, pitting two players against each other in a back and forth to score more goals than the other. Easy to pick up and understand, but with some hidden tactics and depth, Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball is the definition of a small scale multiplayer gem.
Each game has a line of players across the bottom of the screen and in standard mode, a goal at either end of the screen – one blue and one red. The players are yellow and so will be the ball when it initially drops into play. Yellow means neutral in Dudelings. Each player (blue and red) uses left and right to cycle across the players to control one of them as their colour and when in control, you can make them jump to head or chest bump the ball. Doing so changes it to your colour and the ball will bounce off into the direction you’ve bounced it off in. So long as the ball is in your colour, if it hits your opponents goal, you’ll score a point. Of course, your opponent can make another player jump and block your shots and take back ball possession.
So as Foosball meets Hungry Hungry Hippos, there are a few tactics to help you out. Firstly there is a stamina meter that allows you to use a few dash jumps. These hit the ball harder but the player jumps faster so it required more precise timing. In theory they are harder to defend too. The other tactic is that you can punch the player either side of you in the face. This stuns them for a few seconds and puts them out of play. If you are quick enough, you can punch the player your opponent is controlling and they are stunned and not able to switch out to someone else. You’ll want to make hay and score a goal or two whilst you have control of the field too.
Games have various powerups that you can toggle on or off. One turns balls into bowling balls, meaning its difficult to get them air, whilst another turns them into paper bags and they float up and move at pace. Some balls can be made bigger or smaller or it can spawn a new ball for multiball play. Alongside those features you can toggle the amount of balls in play from one to ten and the total amount of points required for a win. Each match is also commentated on when someone scores and there is a male and female commentator to choose from. Just be aware that they’ll speak for each scoring point so if you are lobbing multiple balls into goals, they get very, very chatty and repetitive.
Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball has three modes. The standard mode works like foosball with a goal each. You can’t score own goals thankfully. There is then Hoop mode where there is only a single goal in the centre top of the screen. This basketball variant adds in additional tactics of waiting for your opponent to make aim and then quickly launching a player to take a nudge on the ball at the last moment to steal the point. The third mode is Volley. This places a net in the middle and removes the goals. You can only control players on your half of the screen and you need to push the ball off the other side of the screen. Volley is fun but if you have two very good players, the matches can drag on a little so adjust your winning point limit accordingly. AI works well when only a few balls are in play for a decent single player experience. I did find that any more than 5 balls will make the AI stop in it tracks or just spam jump on the same player over and over if several balls are near it.
Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball is a great example of a small scope game delivering on its promise. The only reason I haven’t scored this higher is that I kept running into control freezes and I couldn’t understand why. If that gets fixed in a post launch patch, I’ll happily give this an 88/10 and a recommendation. Its retro old school red vs blue fun with no bells or whistles needed because the fundamental gameplay holds up.
Review copy provided by developer. Out now on Steam.
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