Developer: Salt Castle Studio
Publisher: Badland Publishing, Leoful, Salt Castle Studio
Platfom: PC, Switch, Xbox One, PS4
Tested on: PC
Alpaca Ball: Allstars – Review
If we just typed ‘Rocket League with alpacas’, we could just basically end our review with that. Nonetheless, as we’d like to do a more thorough job than that, we’ll delve deeper into the ins and outs of this wacky arcade title, that supports local play and even has a small story mode to explore. Choosing between funny hats, we picked out our alpaca to play some soccer.
Story
There’s a tiny little story to be found in Alpaca Ball: Allstars, where you are rising through the ranks of becoming a real soccer player. There are short dialogues to be found between the different levels and they do add a bit of charm to the game, but it also feels a bit useless for a game such as this. It would have been better to add more diversity in the content, rather than create a somewhat pointless story for the game.
Graphics
Graphically the game is actually quite adorable. You’ll have the alpacas running around on the field, with their necks moving all wobbly, while constantly running into things. When bashing into obstacles, they somewhat react like pudding, where they get distorted or ‘destroyed’, immediately mending themselves to their original state after you break contact with them. The arenas are quite diverse, and look appealing, even if there’s only around ten of them. The characters also have a bit of diversity, but it never gets truly impressive in that department. The ragdoll physics do make you laugh and can present you with some distorted images when playing.
The developers picked a nice theme for the game, namely the South-American culture, where you have different arenas based on the Favelas, Machu Picchu and so on. This is further emphasized with the colorful aesthetics and the diversity in the different arenas.
Sound
The sound design is actually quite nice, with a very nice introduction song playing in the menu. This immediately brought us in the right mood to start playing and also had the proper ‘soccer/football’ vibe. The rest of the music and sounds suffice for the job at hand, but nothing equals the song in the menu. Again the developers made sure to stay in tune with the South-American theme of the game by making the music very festive and somewhat carnival-like.
Gameplay
Alpaca Ball: Allstars is an arcade party game in which you play matches of soccer with alpacas. These adorable animals do not use their feet however, as they will use their long necks to whack the ball, using their head as a golf club. Even though this title offers a small story (career) mode, the premise of the game will always remain the same, namely score more goals than your opponent(s). You can play matches ranging from 1 vs 1 to 4 vs 4 formats. This means that the game is fun for local co-op. The game does offer a remote play function, allowing friends who do not own the game to join in on the fun. The latter works quite well.
As the game is based on somewhat ragdoll physics, you’ll not always be in control of what you want to do. You’ll get smacked around the tiny arena you find yourself in, and scoring goals can sometimes be a bit of luck, rather than being in control. Nonetheless, the control scheme is quite simple and the variety of different balls, in this case actually also a cube and puck, are a nice change of pace, albeit of the same formula. On top of that, there are random power-ups that might make your neck longer, give you a homing projectile, let you fire an armadillo, and so on.
The biggest problem with the game lies in its content. While games such as Rocket League also started out with limited content, their base content already offered a lot of cosmetic items to unlock, competitive online multiplayer, and so on. This game is basically the same style as the aforementioned game, but lacks in providing enough content for you to plow through, and even local co-op tends to get boring after a while.
Conclusion
Alpaca Ball: Allstars is an amusing break from more serious releases during this time of the year and it can actually be a lot of fun. Sadly, with the high price tag, the limited content and the lack of an actual online multiplayer mode, this one will be soon forgotten, or not even noticed by the gaming community. Overall a fun game, but only worth around a quarter of its current asking price, amusing as it may be with friends. With the necessary updates and extra content, this could become a hit.
Alpaca Ball: Allstars - Review,
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