#IDARB is an interesting little trip. When I started hearing about it, it had comparisons to some action sports titles like Cyberball. Now take that basic idea of wacky sports, but make it a weird basketball/blitzball/soccer hybrid. And then totally go nuts with it. That’s #IDARB, short for It Draws a Red Box.
The game is presented in a very low fidelity sprite based art style. The game plays like a weird fusion of Basketball, soccer and blitzball from Final Fantasy X. You play in a small 2d platforming arena, and you goal is to get your ball into the other goal. Balls can be stolen from other players, but that’s where normalcy ends. Soon, the game transforms into something bizarre. At certain points, the arena will have traps activate, or your character will receive some kind of power up to give you an edge. It’s total pandemonium. Water will sometimes fill in the stage, or lasers will shoot out of the sides of the arena and make players lose the ball. Or maybe the screen will flash random images like a face for no reason other than throwing the players off. Or your movement controls will reverse, or you will be set on fire and burn other players, stealing their ball away.
You can play a single player game, which has a very absurd but amusing story. Or you can play locally or online with others in multi-player. You can also select different preselected teams, or edit your own. One of the cooler things was that letting the ball dribble by itself for a bit increases your score multiplier, allowing pretty much anyone skilled enough to get ahead in a match. Although the mayhem going onscreen with 7 other players might make that hard, it’s totally a party game that people will likely enjoy for random fun. You can also use some social networking options to tweet out stuff, or make integrated use of twitch for streaming. The game affectionately calls hashtags ‘hashbombs’. There’s really not much to the game. It’s simple, has fun music, and is fun to play, especially in a group. The only real complaint is possibly a lack of more single player content, and it might be a bit too random. Otherwise, it’s worth a look if you plan on playing with friends often.
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