Ultra Hyperball (Nintendo Switch) Review

Much like the premise of its namesake, Ultra Hyperball's narrative structure is very simple. Living in the world of a popular sport called Hyperball, protagonist Jay seeks to leave behind his mediocre life at his parents' noodle shop and pursue a higher calling. Told through cutscenes just before levels, Jay can rise all the way to the top of the Hyperball Federation tryouts and achieve his dreams. These cutscenes have a large amount of text dialogue, but are very brief and skippable. It's a neat little pixel-coated yarn told to weave the levels together, but largely unimportant to the gameplay at hand.

Namely, the Hyperball itself. The game begins with a useful tutorial explaining the starting rules; a player of the sport has to jump in place to header a Hyperball higher and higher in the air. Done via a simple button press, the key is timing; hitting the ball at the full height of the jump will knock it further into the sky than if done mid-jump, for example. Hitting certain heights will award medals and progress onto the next level - Bronze being the one that allows the latter, but Silver and Gold typically unlock new character avatars to choose from, as well. It's an incredibly simple concept that is almost offputtingly so at first glance, but provides instant accessibility for younger and less experienced players, and also a gratifying challenge for medal collectors, especially when unlocking new avatars to use from the vast potential selection available. The instant understanding of the control scheme helps too, as does the solid framerate the game operates at.

The levels in Ultra Hyperball are laid out in a grid-like fashion, with each unlocking adjacent squares upon completion. Following down this grid opens up new ways to play the sport, including a couple that make effective use of the Switch's feature set. The Team ruleset is still a solo effort, but requires touchscreen input to make two or more characters alternately. Tilt uses the motion control of the system, separate Joy-Con, or the Switch Pro Controller to guide an avatar around the pitch instead of staying in place, and hitting the Hyperball before other NPCs do. Run is similar, but uses the analogue stick instead, and the Ultimate line of levels mixes up all these rules as an ending to Jay's storyline upon completion. Later unlocked levels within these rulesets can be very difficult, and although there is only five to each one, the medal collecting gives good encouragement to return.

Although Ultra Hyperball begins as a solo-orientated game, it plays home to a surprisingly robust multiplayer component, as well. Using the same grid level structure, two-four players can cooperate in modes that reflect the aforementioned special rulesets, or just go all out against each other in Battle modes instead. The instant accessibility and easy controls give these modes instant appeal, and the dual Joy-Con feature of the Switch further emphasises this. Ultra Hyperball is far from the most sophisticated downloadable game on Switch, but the cheap price and enticing multiplayer component makes it a worthy choice in group play.