Steam Next: Brave Ball

 He shoots...

Oh, so I'm just going to sit here and talk about Brave Ball for an entire blog. Is that what I'm about to do? Well I'm going to attempt to, and I need to, because the following blog makes my toothache to consider writing. ( This is my stop gap, for my own sanity) And it probably is worth mentioning that this is yet another Steam Next fest download that I picked up on an uninformed whim, although to be brutally honest I don't actually recall seeing the logo on this one. I may have just downloaded it on a subconscious whim and loaded it up without even thinking. (Did I even see the title? Did I even download this game at all? Is this an actual game? Am I even awake and writing a blog right now?) So I guess this marks the only Steam Fest game that I played truly without any single wisp of an expectation, and that makes my opinion... pure? Yeah... let's go with pure.

I've touched upon a lot of different types of games, and I'm not just talking about genre here. (Because in that case I wasn't actually all that diverse at all.) I've played ambitious games with talent and promise behind them, I've played interesting takes on an established formula, I've played one really bad probably-has-no-future game, and I've also played... the game I'm talking about next time. (There's no point trying to define it, that won't work) But I only played one game that fits the all important role of games that all too easy get lost in the grand space of the industry. The little game, the simple one, that title that promises to kill some time for you and little else. It seems simple enough, but simplicity is one of the hardest concepts imaginable in art, which is why we don't actually get a lot of games like that anymore. (The amount of effort it takes to make such an idea hurts souls.)

Because when you really stop and think about it, a game which is designed to be mechanically engaging on a simple level is really like asking someone to go back and reinvent the wheel. The basics of gaming sought to achieve that and they really laid the foundations of how we look at video games today. Space invaders, Pac Man, Pong, all of these games are small titles designed for the sole purpose of killing time and providing entertainment, and they're as primal as it gets when we're talking about basic entertainment. Thus even when a game only attempts to touch upon that sort of audience, rather than supplant that foundational level of game design, I have to take my metaphorical hat off (I'm indoors, why would I be wearing a hat?) for a title with a developer boasting that level of confidence.

To be clear, Brave Ball is not a revolutionary title. I don't want you going around thinking that's what I'm saying here. It's just a very functionally mechanical no-frills game that tries to deliver it's core game premise and nothing else. (How many other games do you know that can do that?) And I accept that this sort of presentation which the game is wrapped up in might be totally down to this being a really early development alpha demo and maybe the developer has some wild ideas for a storyline, plot and layers of gameplay loops. But right now, how it's presented in the demo, I feel this game is in it's most natural element, so I'm going to proceed under the assumption that I'm not wrong in the way I feel and this is in fact, a bare basics banger.

So what is Brave Ball? Well it's a video game obviously. One that employs a simplified, almost primary geometric, art style to depict a spiky red haired anime man who's main source of damage dealing is his soccer ball. Yep, inject instant memories of Shaolin Soccer and Haikyuu!! Especially for the fact that I'm being totally literal when I say that damage is only dealt with this ball, as in the entirety of the gameplay loop is kicking balls around and watching them roll into enemies. Apparently that anime protagonist level of leg strength only works when there's a medium between himself and the enemy, for whatever reason. And that's about the high and low of it. No story, no set-up, just stages of enemies, balls and a vague looted currency/points system that has no purpose in the game at this moment.

Where things get a little strange, and I'll be honest and say that Brave Ball sort of misses the mark here, is that you can't actually free aim with the ball. Yes, there is a bouncing and deflection system working in the physics engine so that shots can bank off walls, but you have to lock on in order to shoot in the first place. It's bizarre. The game makes you go and collect your ball afterwards, although I seem to have found that if the rain of enemy fire proves too much then the ball will teleport back if you give it enough time. And finally, predictably, there's a special move meter which builds up and launches a true anime-style mega shot.

And that is about the whole game as it exists right now, as rough as it is. Just stages of insectile monsters, light bullet hell combat and a bit of a rigid attack system, topped off on the other end by a boss fight. Pure as pure can be. Feedback is pretty obvious stuff. I think that there should be a free aim to shooting, no enemy health bars makes it difficult to tell the progress you're making on a boss and just aesthetically, the basic shapes of the stages mixed with the stage colour choices makes some of the rooms blend into one another. (Maybe the developer was going for that, but I didn't particularly like it myself) But I would implore that the game not trip up over unnecessarily complicating itself, because sometimes it's nice to be up front and bare.

Brave Ball is a reminder, if we need it, that pretty much any level of creativity can be applied into making a game when used correctly, it just takes the work to realise it. As it exists now the concept could use a little refining, and perhaps some art tweaks here and there, but you don't need a massive amount of bodies to sit down and make this a game which could prove just as entertaining to some people as those huge stupidly long projects. (At the very least, kicking around a virtual ball for half an hour seems a lot more fun than icon hunting on the latest Ubisoft open world map.) So I rate the simplicity, the courage, and the basic physics, attached to Brave Ball and encourage you to support small developers where you find them.