Good sports: Clusterpuck 99 and SpiritSphere DX ⊟
For some reason, I keep categorizing the stuff I saw at PAX South. I already told you about the two times I saw Vita games, though those two games couldn’t have been more different.
But two other games I played at the show were more similar; they shared a genre and a basic goal, though they varied quite a bit within that genre. Both fun though!
Clusterpuck 99 is already out on Xbox One and Steam, so you may have heard of it. If not, it’s a stripped-down pinball/hockey type deal for up to 8 players. Teams try to bounce the puck to each other’s goals, checking other players and avoiding hazards and dropoffs on the way. It’s simple enough to pick up immediately… and has a level editor for infinite playing fields.
SpiritSphere DX, published by Slime-San developer Fabraz, trades Clusterpuck’s super clean look for NES-esque pixels, and the abstract player avatars for a crew of fantasy warriors and creatures. The object here is still to move a projectile through the opponent’s goal, but players have the use of dash moves and character-specific attacks to achieve that – one player can swing a sword around in big looping arcs, another can shoot fireballs, etc. In addition to a variety of characters, the ball can also be a number of different objects, each with its own properties, like multiball, or fire, or… being a potato. The air hockey-ish game was originally a Game Boy-style game jam entry!
These games were both perfect for PAX. It took me no time at all to learn them and start having fun. With SpiritSphere, I ended up playing a few rounds with a pair of children, ages approximately 5 and 8, who took a bit longer to pick up the rules but had a great time after a bit of practice. That’s a good sign for a party game.
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