DOUBLE TEAM
As you'd expect, given the social nature of sport, most of the games featured in this article have multiplayer offerings of some variety - and with its Pokemon-Uke aspects, a competitive mode for Beastieball was doubly inevitable. "I'm almost afraid to talk about that too much." says Greg Lobanov. acknowledging the challenges that accompany any multiplayer game. "But for the record, it's fucking awesome." He started with the core strategy game, to make sure it was compelling enough to build an entire adventure around, and has continued to test it while developing the Singleplayer aspect. "We have one person on our private Discord who has played the game for 250 hours or something," he says. "There are, like, three people on Earth right now who are really into the PvP meta of Beastieball."
Speaking to designers who’ve taken on this challenge, many tell us that their fictional sport game was the most difficult one they’ve ever made. Which raises an obvious question: why do it in the first place?
While some say it’s a result of being sports fans themselves, that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. More representative is Greg Lobanov, maker of Chicory and Wandersong, games about art and music respectively – “things I already knew a fair bit about” – who is now tackling the world of sport, in the forthcoming Beastieball. Lobanov acknowledges that he’s coming at the topic from an outsider, “fish out of water” perspective. While he went to a high school that prioritised athletic scholarships, he “didn’t fit in at all”, being less interested in the real thing than with its depiction in anime and manga, where sport is a popular subgenre. “I grew up on Prince Of Tennis,” he recalls But for years he has wanted to make a game, initially inspired by his experiences cycling across the US, that focused on community and cooperation. “A game about building a team.” Something that allowed the player to put together a roster and strategise around their individual strengths and weaknesses. “And sport seemed like a really natural fit for that idea.” As for how’d he present it, Lobanov looked at a world typically driven by split-second decisions and reflexes, and landed on a perhaps unlikely answer: a turn-based tactics game. “I wanted a game where you win or lose based on your understanding of the players in your team and how they work together.” The easiest way to represent that was through player
