Hangtime! is a new mashup of genres. It’s a volleyball game… and a roguelike?! How on earth does that work? Surprisingly, it works quite well. The on-court action is fast and frenetic, whilst the between-matches upgrades and choices have an immediate impact on your player. Hangtime! is difficult, but very rewarding when it all comes together.
I’ll get the most baffling design decision out of the way up front. This is a single-player and an AI teammate or a co-op vs an AI team game only. There is no way to play against another human or any other modes outside of the main story quest. This is a huge spike and a miss for me, but once I moved beyond that, I quickly grew to appreciate the game that was here. You are a volleyball player aiming to win a college league, and this starts with a practice match before taking on increasingly more capable and agile teams from other colleges. Matches start off as first to 3, then 5, and then 7, with a single game loss ending your run.
Movement in Hangtime! is fast and responsive. You move with the analogue stick and have a single button for all your other moves. This means if you want to jump or punt the ball, it’s the same button press. Every move is contextual to where you are in relation to the ball and whether the ball is rising, flying, or falling. Initially, I found most of my dropped points were down to me not getting the timing right. I’d be expecting a run forward and punt, but my character would jump and comedically jump under or over the ball, and I’d lose a point. After a while, I grew more attuned to the nuances of how early to press to jump versus waiting and just tapping the volleyball into the air instead. After several hours, I still wished the jump and ball actions were on separate buttons, but I had got the hang of it. Part of the reason I had got the hang(time) of it was because the AI teammate I had was incredibly helpful. Early on, they carried me, and once I became competent, we worked like a team. The AI teammate would often cover the part of the court I wasn’t in, and so when we lost points, it was usually down to a duff move by me, or a rare mistake by the AI.
The roguelike elements come between matches. There are two types of upgrades you can unlock in Hangtime! The first are stat boosts. Each character has five stats, such as speed, block, and power, and these can be upgraded three times each. The second type of unlocks are ability cards that tweak the playstyle or tactics of your team. The Pipe card lets you leap from the back row for a huge spike, or Wild Form may let you unleash a random hard spike that goes at twice the speed. These upgrade types switch out after each match, and you are always given a choice of two or three to pick from.
What I love about these upgrades is that you can feel them instantly. Upgrade your power, and suddenly you’ll notice your serve will go further, and if you launch at the same place as before, you might overshoot the court and foul ball. Blocks hang longer in the air at their peak height, making blocking easier to time. The feedback is immediate, and it lets you experiment across multiple runs to see what works best for your playstyle. The AI opponents get incrementally tougher per match, too. They make fewer mistakes, spike with force, and know exactly when to block and punt the ball softly over the net. A few teams can frustrate with their floating ball that then suddenly drops attack, but with practice, you’ll get there. The AI are a good challenge.
Speaking of hard spikes, one subtle graphic tweak I love in Hangtime! is that when one team wins a point, especially when it’s with a hard spike, the camera tilts out of whack. Over time, if one team is smashing the other, the camera will be tilted at a sloped angle to make it feel like the losing team is playing an uphill battle. It is a subtle nuance in an otherwise clean, crisp, and low in detail graphical palette.
Local multiplayer missing aside, Hangtime! is a victorious mashup of volleyball and roguelike elements. Easy to pick up, hard to master. Hangtime! is a game you may find yourself smashing restart over and over until you get the flow of the match nailed down, and you grab the winning trophy.
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