Developer Whale Peak Games
Publisher Super Rare Originals
Format PC (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series
Release Out now
Before setting up Whale Peak Games, Jakob Wahlberg cut his teeth as an artist on the SteamWorld games. Yet his studio’s debut release, a frenetic arcade-style Roguelike, could hardly be farther from the sedate likes of SteamWorld Heist or Quest. Go Mecha Ball is the twin-stick shooter as fairground ride, by way of the pinball table: your spherical mech is regularly propelled up vertical ramps and through chutes, unfurling its arms and legs to rain down laser destruction on robotic opponents.
Those enemies have emerged from some manner of portal, revealed in simple title cards to have interrupted the blissful existence of protagonist Cat Rascal and her friends – whose response, naturally, is to build a mech suit that folds up into a ball. A little more context for the action that ensues would have been welcome, if hardly essential for a game so focused on arcade thrills. Yet when unfurled, the stomping suit’s slow movement doesn’t exactly raise the pulse. Per genre tradition, the left stick controls your clomping movement, with the right directing the trajectory of your ordnance with the aid of a generous aim assist. So far, so familiar.
Go Mecha Ball comes to life when you do as the title suggests, squeezing the left trigger to prompt Cat Rascal to curl into a ball, which moves at a much more energetic pace. Though you can’t fire in ball form, the right trigger activates a boost, sending Cat Rascal clattering into enemies. Doing so when a hovering exclamation mark indicates an imminent attack will cancel it, allowing you to counter with impunity. Thus you find yourself settling into a rhythm of furling, boosting and unfurling: rolling around to dodge enemy bullets, zipping in for a boost attack and then finishing off a foe with a rattle of machine-gun fire.
It’s an approach incentivised by the ammunition system. Since ramming into enemies is the only way to regain rounds, you’re forced to engage at close quarters rather than relying on sniping at enemies. There are also combos to consider, with bonus points and occasional health top-ups awarded for seeing off enemies in quick succession. As such, you’re encouraged to zip around the arenas with abandon, racing up boost ramps to reach the next set of enemies. The pinball-like features of the arenas change over the game’s four worlds: chevroned ramps and curves are soon joined by bumpers, bounce pads, fans and pneumatic tubes, and you find yourself ricocheting around stages like a mechanised Sonic.
Though you begin each run with the same basic machine gun, enemies occasionally drop new weapons. They may also leave behind blue and gold coins: the latter can be spent in a shop every few levels (or saved up to purchase suits with different stats), while the former can be pumped
