Beastieball [Review]
Beastieball is a monster-taming sports game. Now I know that’ll turn heads but these two genres integrated almost seamlessly. It takes the concept of creature collecting but instead of the classic battling system they usually do you are coaching these creatures, or “Beasties” to play volleyball (Beastball). It’s a turn-based RPG and still manages to follow the (basic) rules of volleyball. Every time the ball enters your side of the net it enters your attack turn, you have three moves during this turn to use whatever defensive or supportive moves you have before returning the volley by attacking the other team. When the other team has the ball you are in defense mode and can switch out Beasties. You can have five on your team but only two on the court at once, the substitutions add an element of strategy, you don’t want to send in someone who will get knocked out in one hit. It’s a creative and unique way to do a genre that’s been done so often. It doesn’t feel like any other monster-taming game or any other game for that matter.
As of right now, the game has a total of 106 unique Beasties with even more to come (which can be read about on the game’s roadmap), all of which have unique designs that don’t feel like they’re copying other characters' designs. You might be wondering how the capturing works, after all, it is a monster-taming/collecting game. You don’t throw a capturing device like in the usual games, instead, you have to learn about them in the wild by playing against them. Then you’ll learn their recruiting conditions, things like “You must attack from the front row twice to recruit this Beastie” which forces you to stay in the match longer than just one turn. If you complete the conditions the game will allow you to recruit the Beastie.
Since the game is an RPG the story is a big selling factor, it’s a fun and light-hearted game with a story to match. Since how good you are at volleyball determines your social status in the world, the protagonist's home is threatened by the big leagues, they want to destroy a Beastie sanctuary to build a stadium. Since the league only listens to ranked coaches you have to become one of the best coaches in the league! As you play you learn more of the world, story, and NPC’s, and it’s interesting. I found myself engaged with what the NPCs were going through and I wanted to learn and play more. For those NPCs you'd like to know more about, you can interact with them outside the story to become better friends with them! This game has a light-hearted and cartoony style to complement the story and gameplay. It’s very colorful and reminds me of Scott Pilgrim’s art style. There’s a character customization portion though there aren’t as many options as I would like. There’s only one body shape that you can shrink or stretch, there are also minimal accessories. I know the game is still in Early Access and there’s still room for changes, but I would like to see a bit more customization options, especially since you can change your appearance at any time.
Beastiball also has all the quality-of-life features that I almost require for playing monster-taming games. You can change the Beastie's name and line up at any point. However, if you change your party while out on the road there is a wait time for your Beastie to get to you from the reserves so be careful when you change them out. You don’t have to unlock fast travel, you can just do it from the start as long as you go to your map. The game does everything it can to be straightforward, there’s no running around getting stuck if you don’t want to, and you can teleport to a town and check your objective from the pause menu. This is nice because it’s remarkably easy to lose the plot of an RPG. In Beastieball, even if you go the wrong way you are still progressing because you don’t have to take on the league coaches in a specific order you just need to make sure you’re strong enough. I love this game and will absolutely be playing it until it gets a full release. The game was only just released as Early Access so there’s no full release date yet, but there is a lot of content right now with only more to come. And I will be eagerly waiting because personally, this game is a 10/10 and deserves support to become even better than it is. The game is developed by Wishes Ultd. and published by Klei Publishing and is currently available in Early Access on Steam. Review Written By Mia B
