Volleyball is a tricky and immediate sport that requires precision in aim and movement. So what happens if you purposefully take precision away and turn the physics into a Terrance and Philip puppet show? You’ll get something that looks and plays like Wacky Volleyball and I need to state early on – every single design decision is the gameplay mechanic equivalent of Marmite. You’ll love it or hate it – there is no in-between. Sadly, I ended up on the hating side, but I can see why other players could enjoy it.
Wacky Volleyball places you in 1v1 matches on a 2D volleyball court. Your character moves like an action figure frozen in time and that means each step in an awkward bunny hop left or right. Want precise movements? Too bad – you’ll be unable to nudge your character into an exact spot. You’ll have to make do with “in the vicinity”. In order to lob, spike or serve the ball over the net, you’ll have a single action button that throws your hands up in the air like pulling a cam toy switch. Depending on where the ball is, the shot taken will contextually change. If it’s above the net, you’ll smash the ball down to the ground. If it’s at or below the net, it’ll lob the ball high into the air. If your character is next to the net, you’ll perform a block which dribbles the ball like a punt forward without power.
You cannot override any of this and is a problem because of how ragged and imprecise the movement is. You can’t always get behind the ball to make the shot so you have to press action early. Taking the shot earlier means you smash the ball down, rather than hit it up because the ball is above the net. You’ll lose the point. Move back further you will hop too far back and be misaligned for the ball, or arrive too late because of the clumsy movement speed. This gameplay loop continued throughout my entire playtime of Wacky Volleyball and it drove me to distraction. It is a game purposefully broken by wacky controls, but then it doesn’t provide the levels of fun to make the wackiness acceptable. I was infuriated throughout and found no enjoyment in playing the game.
The one shining light of Wacky Volleyball is the power-up system. If you hit the ball into a power-up, it changes something in the game. I like the trampoline that gives you a single floor bounce to keep you in the game. Another one gives a strong breeze that pushes a ball in one direction when in the air. Another speeds up play by making every shot more powerful. An electric fence that periodically stuns a player gave an interesting challenge too as you can use the action button to take a fake shot and avoid the shock if you are lucky. These are fun but in no way make up for having to wrestle the game to the ground to get some kind of enjoyment out of it. I also couldn’t understand why the game is single-player only as it seems extremely limiting to not have local multiplayer battles here.
Ultimately, if you enjoy perversely broken physics and controls – Wacky Volleyball may still be right for you. It left me cold because, unlike other intentionally broken control scheme games, Wacky Volleyball didn’t leave any fun elements in here for me to savour. If you need a party volleyball fix, I’d recommend Volleypals or Toaster Ball if you want carnage. Sadly, this won’t be gracing my local multiplayer game nights.
Review code provided by the developer. Wacky Volleyball is out now on Steam.
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