In Smesport, two teams battle to control the screen, which is divided into seven lanes of red and blue. When a lane is totally filled with one colour, it’s a ‘goal’
Michael Brough is on a roll. The one-man indie game factory has already released one of the best smartphone games of the year in the shape of cunning 'Rouge-like', 868-Hack; he's also working on potentially the finest iPad title too – the idiosyncratic space blaster, Helix. Now he is moving into sport. Sort of.
In Smesport, two teams battle it out to control the screen, which is divided into seven lanes. At first, each lane is half red, half blue, but if a player moves their circular avatar to the very end of their own coloured section of a lane, they push that colour toward the opponent's end. When a lane is totally filled with one colour, it's a 'goal' – three goals and you win.
To add complexity, there is also a ball, that can be picked up, passed to your team-mate or tackled from an opposing player; and when you have possession of the ball, you 'push' your colour faster. In effect, it's a really clever combination, part cerebral strategy game of zonal domination, part sports simulation, where accurate passing and positional awareness are paramount.
Like many of Brough's projects, this one evolved from a game jam – in this case, 7dRTS, a mini-offshoot of the regular Ludam Dare challenges, in which developers were tasked with making a real-time strategy title in seven days.
"Jonathan Brodsky from Lucky Frame came up with the idea of a [multiplayer online battle arena mod] Dota variant with three one-person teams, and we just started talking about that," says Brough. "It got me thinking about how you could reduce Dota down to something even more simple. I started making a game with two players on each team and two lanes to fight over. I made a prototype, and I kept simplifying it. But it wasn't coming together. I took a step back and thought, okay, what else can I remove to make this work? I ended up with a series of lanes that you just push to occupy space, and it worked. But I've ended with something that looks nothing like Dota!"
Whatever the heck it is, it's insanely compelling. The two-person teams have to develop clever emergent strategies, combining offensive play with defensive awareness: if an opponent is pushing their colour towards the very end of the lane, you can rush in and block it, but then you're stuck until your opponent gives up – or you get the ball, allowing you to push back. But concentrating too much on ball possession may allow a sneaky foe to quietly push one lane along in the background.
Multiple strategies arise and fall as the ball ricochets around the screen; do you play like a strategy gamer or a fan of Fifa or PES? You can pull elements from either, employing zonal or man-marking tactics from football, while using attrition and stealth concepts from the RTS genre. It all happens at a blistering pace, players shouting at each other, the sound of joypad buttons being hammered.
Playing Smesport against Brough at GameCity's One Arcade, it took me back to the days of sci-fi sports sims – the likes of Lucasfilm's BallBlazer and The Bitmap Brother's Speedball 2. These titles brought a sparse futuristic steeliness to the whole concept of sport; they stripped out the obsessions with contemporary authenticity and showmanship that define licensed football games, and amped up the whole sense of cerebral battle. Smesport does the same.
I ask if Brough has thought about adding to the complexity. Perhaps introducing power-ups or differently skilled team members. "I'm still thinking about that," he says. "When it was still like Dota, it was obvious that characters should have different abilities. It kind of seems unnecessary now. I may code up some different abilities, just to test it. But I'll keep the simple mode – it's quite a complex game already – adding another layer on top of that may be too much."
When I profiled Brough earlier this year, he closed the interview with a lovely quote: "you always have to subtract from somewhere." It is mantra that seems counter-intuitive in the ever more detail-obsessed game design universe. But it works here, and Smesport should stand beside SportsFriends as an intriguing exploration of sporting simulation. It is also a bloody exciting and demanding game in its own right.
Smesport is in development for PC, release date is to be confirmed. You can find out more at Michael Brough's website
Source: Theguardian. com
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