“Furyball is a fast-paced action roguelite where your only weapon is a bouncing bullet ball. Control the chaos, shatter enemies, and survive sport-themed arenas inspired by pinball and grindhouse cinema.” – Steam Description

Furyball: Rogue Revenge is a top-down pinball parry simulator. While you play, you will become the paddle and strike the ball directly into the face of your opponents. While reflecting the ball around the arena, you will also find perks and abilities to make your ball bounce faster, deal more damage, or set the arena on fire, causing chaos in each bounce. So prepare yourself as a ball moves past the sound barrier into your face and the face of every enemy you fight.

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Being a Human Pinball Machine

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The game starts by immediately throwing you into the tutorial teaching you how the basic controls work. It will ask you if you want the simple or complex controls. I recommend the complex controls. The only difference is that a few buttons are on different key binds; you can use both thumbsticks to move and direct the direction you want to hit the ball. This will help massively later on in future battles where being able to direct the ball behind you is super important.

After the tutorial, it throws you directly into a run. Each run will have you going from room to room, defeating enemies by bouncing a fast-moving ball into them over and over until they split apart, and I do mean split apart, in a shower of blood. Each room will also have enemies and objects in it that can be used by hitting the ball against them. My personal favorite being a dome that shoots a shock wave every time the ball bounces against it. After each room, you will get an item, power-up, passive, or currency depending on the route you chose. Something to keep in mind: enemies can and will hit the ball back at you, turning the color from blue to red, and if the ball is moving fast enough, you will get hit, so it’s time to move.

After a few rooms, you will come across a boss room; these bosses are unlike anything I’ve ever fought in a game. The amount of stuff that is going on screen is truly astounding. You’ll be in the middle of bouncing your ball, dodging boss attacks, and another ball the boss sent at you. It is a beautiful mess of chaos to be in the middle of. I have been trying to beat the first boss, and it took about 4 hours of runs before I succeeded.

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Progression

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After a run, you will have collected some currency to upgrade your bat, ball, gloves, and passives. Passives give you boosts to health, ball speed, damage done with bat, and many others. These upgrades will make future runs not only easier but possible in the first place. However, this game does something I have never seen before: achievements matter. You must complete achievements in the game to unlock upgrades for your character to upgrade using the currency.

Such achievements could be as small as killing 10 enemies with a ball to killing 3 enemies in a single room with nothing but environmental damage. There is also other equipment you can purchase for metals, such as paddles instead of a bat, different balls, or different gloves that allow you to pick up the ball more easily while it’s moving. Each item can then be upgraded further using currency to make it better for the next run.

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Speed is the Name of the Game

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This game does something very special that I haven’t seen in another game: speed. What I mean is how fast every move is while you’re playing. With the ball shooting around the screen faster than I can think, the enemies hitting the ball right back at me faster than my monitor can handle, and never being able to catch up to the ball to redirect it in a better direction. It is a game of pure skill and perfect for any adrenaline junkie who loves to move fast and hit hard.

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• Graphics– The game has a very fun art style, taking a lot of liberties with Mad Max and other grindhouse films of the 70s. There was a lot of effort put into character designs. When you talk to the NPCs to level up, you see some really cool art of the character, which I felt was a really nice touch.
• Gameplay– The gameplay feels really good. The speed, the combat, the way the whole game feels. By the end of a run, I realized I was on the edge of my seat trying to follow the ball to get it moving in a direction I liked. The bosses, on the other hand, are rough, not that they are buggy or don’t work, but are a level of hard I was not expecting from a game. This is not a bad thing but something refreshing to see, a good challenge.
• Sound– The sound design is really good; they have a lot of discount tracks that make the game feel like your right there playing ball in a post apocalyptic world. The sounds of the characters, however, are not as well crafted as the music; sometimes I found myself getting annoyed with the enemies talking mainly because it was the same sound over and over again.
• Controls– The controls feel really good. As I said earlier, there are 2 different control schemes to use: one that only uses one of the controller sticks and the other that uses both sticks. As for the keyboard, I didn’t use it, so you’ll have to get the game and try it out yourself.
• Story– There was not much of a story to the game; the basic premise is your and outsider with nothing to lose. Ready to pick a fight with anyone that gets in your way.