Stikbold! Review

Every once in awhile, an Indie game comes along to remind you how much fun these little titles can be. Stikbold is one such game. With more moustaches than an 18th century Victorian BBC drama,  more 70’s themed funk than a Bony M reunion, and more colour than an Andy Warhol art attack lesson, Stikbold! gets it’s groove on and delivers a tight, fun Dodgeball adventure.

The tone of the game is in much the same as the actual hilarious Ben Stiller film “Dodgeball”; in fact the single player story line here in Stikbold! was an awesomely great surprise. You play as either Bjorn or Jerome, a dodgeball team who last year came second to the beautiful woman dodgeball team.

Heidi, the girl who Bjorn is infatuated with, is kidnapped, and rather than believe their luck that the competition for the upcoming Dodgeball tournament has now disappeared, Bjorn and Jerome, do the heroic thing for love and hunt down Heidi’s kidnapper. This well put together little story is actually quite epic in its own way as your on a quest to find Heidi, you encounter many colourful characters like Honey Hippies who try to mow you down in their VW camper van, or a Sea Captain on an oil rig who has Greenpeace activists trying to disrupt things.  Sound crazy, oh it is, and it’s all the more fun because of it.

The story is delivered in a quirky Danish like nonsense language (the developers are Danish) that has speech bubbles to explain, but flows very well as not to be a chore to read.

The main story is actually playable in couch co-op or on your own, as is the game’s other multiplayer mode where you can set the parameters of your choice. Unfortunately, this is a couch co-op game only and not an online one. More the pity as this would have been incredible fun online.

The gameplay itself is surprisingly challenging but simple to use. You throw a ball at players to either knock them out of the arena, or stun them. Once stunned, if they are hit again they are out. Players can easily pass to each other, dive, or with perfect timing, catch the ball. Without the ball you can also push the player with the ball to get it off them. If one of your team is down you can revive them, but then you’re an easy target for the opposition while you do.

The further you play more environmental aspects reveal themselves. For example one battle on a beach with “ beach bikers “ had me not only avoiding them, but pinching crabs that slowed me down, surfboards, and huge waves coming up the beach.  Even on the casual setting, the battles were challenging at times and not a given!

Each battle is the first to three points, and can take some time to win. Add to this you have boss levels too to mix things up. Again on the beach level the boss consisted of beach guards trying to steal my inflatable whale (just go with it, it’s part of the story!) while the ex Dodgeball legend, who is now a beach guard himself, directs them. Then when his troops are defeated you have to get him.
The graphics of the game are smooth, simple and effective in the style of minecraft. Nothing spectacular, but then when the action is fast and flowing, you don’t need it. The audio is also a great feature with some great themed music for the games situations.

I’m a strong advocate of superb game design trumps everything, and this is a case in point. You don’t need stunning graphics, complicated gameplay, over the top production to make a game great. You just need a simple fun idea, that works, and the rest is just gravy.

Stikbold was reviewed on Playstation 4 with a review code provided by the developer Game Swing.