Friends, it is finally time for me to discourse unto you about my great love of balls. The roots of my enthusiasm go back to pinball machines – both the fancier, arcade variety that transmogrify into e.g. screaming robot skulls when you achieve a high-enough multiplier, and the crappy, play-at-home variety that are basically a canted wooden sheet with some numbers drawn on it. But it wasn’t till I embraced the holy medium of videogames that I realised the full potential of balldom.
Initiated, of course, by Sonic the Hedgehog, I descended into a frothing ballpit of ball variations, encompassing everything from the squashy rolling UFOs of Exo One through Katamari Damacy to the overcrowded chutes of Marble World and the spectacle of Overwatch’s Hammond clearing out a capture point by means of sheer, delicious torque. I am always up for a game in which you either control or become a ball, and Go Mecha Ball looks like one of the better ones.
Go Mecha Ball – Release Date Announcement
Out today on Steam and Game Pass from Whale Peak Games and Super Rare Originals, it mixes pinball physics with twin stick shooting on colourful, isometric-style levels full of ramps, chutes, tunnels and bouncepads. If you are similarly carried away, and you’re not on Game Pass, you might want to try the Steam demo in the few hours remaining before release – developers often remove them after launch (update: it appears they’ve literally just pulled the demo as I was writing this).
Adulterating the thrill of a rolling ball is a dangerous business. Graft on too many flourishes, and like an inexpertly blown marble, your creation may struggle to build momentum, hitch on the scenery and provoke the contempt of other ballaficionadoes. But Go Mecha Ball seems to have pulled it off. There’s probably a plot in here somewhere, but the key things to know are that you play one of four transforming ball-mechs, each of which has access to around 25 guns, 20 abilities and 50 upgrades, obtained by means of a roguelike progression system.
This might sound A Bit Much, if you’re just in it for the physics, but the game’s art, sound and animations do a lovely job of bringing it all together into something that feels both immediate and complex. The game’s four worlds also remind me heavily of the old isometric or isometricky platformers I used to enjoy on Sega Saturn, like Sonic 3D Blast, and descendants of those games, like Lumo. Generally speaking, the isometric perspective doesn’t get enough love. There’s something irresistible about the way it slashes the landscape into diagonal shades and textures.
If you’re a fellow ball enthusiast who never outgrew their love of pinball, you might prefer to try out some pinball videogames. Demon’s Tilt is especially good. I’m also told that balls feature in several varieties of real-world sport, some of which have even been turned into videogames, but that sounds like absolute madness to me.
