In the mood for some really hectic and yet fun muliplayer action? If so (and really, who isn’t?), it is time for you to check out the Supraball open alpha!

Sort of a cross between football (that is, American football) and soccer, Supraball is the spiritual successor to the popular Deathball mod from Unreal Tournament 2004. Supraball is all about some fast paced sports action where you use special ball-launching guns to control, pass, and shoot the ball. Oh, and you can smack around the opposing players with it too.

I never tried Deathball, but I did give Supraball a go last night, and it is a helluva lot of fun! At first glance it seemed like it would be simplistic in nature, but it turns out that there is a lot of depth to how you play. Players actually have a variety of types of shots and ball control actions available, many of which are quite subtle in their differences. I am still trying to get a handle on them, so it would be worth reading over the Supraball how-to-play page to get an idea of all of the stuff you can do. You can check out the short gameplay video below of me playing in a losing game that I joined last night (my second game ever, although I did get a lucky goal).

Team play was chaotic but I could tell a lot of players were new like me. Many players were really quite good though, and had excellent ball control. Players can control both the power and the spin of their shots, so you can really get the ball moving in wild directions if you know how. One player can also play as the keeper for each team, gaining increased speed and invulnerability to player aggression. This invulnerability is important, because every other player on the field becomes vulnerable to being pummelled whenever they have the ball.

Ball control breaks down into three broad categories as far as I can tell. You can do shots/passes using either powered-up shots (which take time to charge up and therefore leaves you open to the aforementioned pummelling), dump shots, and passes which can be specifically aimed at teammates. Vacuum moves (I don’t really want to call them “suck” moves) allow you to pull the ball to yourself. Finally deflection moves allow you to (as you can guess) block and deflect incoming shots.

Movement is pretty crazy as well, as all players can multi-jump in order to gain a lot of height before passing and shooting.

Anyway, it is all very insane and a tonne of fun. Since the Supraball open alpha is available to all right now there isn’t any reason not to download it try it out ASAP. The alpha and beta tests will be completely free to play, but once the games officially launches players will need to buy the full game, so try it out while you can. Enjoy!

[Update, May 8: I uploaded a new video of me playing some defense in a later game. I still have a lot to learn, but I am starting to get better at the game.]

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