Developer Whale Peak Games

Publisher Super Rare Originals

Format PC (tested), Xbox One, Xbox Series

  Release Out now

Before setting up Whale Peak Games, Jakob Wahlberg cut his teeth as an artist on the SteamWorld games. Yet his studio’s debut release, a frenetic arcade-style Roguelike, could hardly be farther from the sedate likes of SteamWorld Heist or Quest. Go Mecha Ball is the twin-stick shooter as fairground ride, by way of the pinball table: your spherical mech is regularly propelled up vertical ramps and through chutes, unfurling its arms and legs to rain down laser destruction on robotic opponents.

Those enemies have emerged from some manner of portal, revealed in simple title cards to have interrupted the blissful existence of protagonist Cat Rascal and her friends – whose response, naturally, is to build a mech suit that folds up into a ball. A little more context for the action that ensues would have been welcome, if hardly essential for a game so focused on arcade thrills. Yet when unfurled, the stomping suit’s slow movement doesn’t exactly raise the pulse. Per genre tradition, the left stick controls your clomping movement, with the right directing the trajectory of your ordnance with the aid of a generous aim assist. So far, so familiar.