Mastering my NEW GAME "Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball"

DUDELINGS: ARCADE SPORTSBALL is available NOW!
❯ Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1905160/Dudelings_Arcade_Sportsball/?utm_source=launch-video
❯ Itch.io: https://heavy-element.itch.io/dudelings
❯ Merch: https://shop.heavyelement.io/product-category/dudelings/

I’m Gardiner Bryant and it’s time for a friendly game of sportsball. I’ll walk you through the basics so you’ll be ready to take on your friends or compete against the AI in Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball, available now on Steam and Itch.io

Let’s start with how to score. In a game of Dudelings, you want to control the ball and score points. How you score points depends on the game mode.

The first is “Classic” where you’ve gotta get your ball into your opponent’s goal.

Second, there’s “Hoop,” where your target is to get the ball through the hoop in the middle of the field.

And finally there’s volley, where you have get your ball off your opponent’s side of the screen.

But the question is: how do you manipulate the ball? Use left and right on your controller (or A and D on a keyboard) to cycle through which dudeling you’re controlling. Your currently selected dudeling is indicated by the color of their jersey. “Home” team is blue and “Away” team is red.

Pressing the left or right button will move to the next available dudeling. If there’s an opponent occupying the next dudeling, your selection will leapfrog them. Skilled players can use this technique to their advantage. But we'll talk about that in a minute.

Pressing left or right is good, but holding is even better as you’ll automatically cycle through the available dudelings in that direction.

Now that we have chosen a dudeling, pressing A or Cross on a controller or Space on your keyboard, will make him jump. A short press will cause a short hop, longer presses will cause higher jumps.

Gameplay

Now that we know the basics of competition, let’s talk a little strategy. Choose a dudeling under the ball and press the jump button. When your dudeling connects with the ball, he’ll try to take a shot at the goal. He will automatically aim and throw, but only if the there’s a clear shot. Otherwise, the ball will just bounce off.

So let’s say you’re playing as the HOME team on Classic mode. Hitting the ball with the right side of a dudeling will cause him throw it at the AWAY team’s goal. If the ball hits your dudeling on the left side, though, it will just bounce off.

Now you might have noticed that whenever your dudeling touches a ball, it will change to your color. This indicates that it’s in your ‘possession.’ By default, there’s no own-goals in Dudelings, so a blue ball can’t enter the HOME team’s goal.

Also by default, match point is set to 10. So the first team to score 10 points is the victor.

Additional Moves

So those are the basics. Move, jump, shoot. It’s pretty simple. Except there are a few wrinkles that are sure to spice up the competition.

First, let’s talk about “snapping.” You can “snap” your control to either goalie using the left and right triggers on your controller (or Q and E on your keyboard). Snapping is critical to make clutch saves and controlling the right dudeling in the nick of time.

Next, is the “dash.” Press B or Circle (or Shift on your Keyboard) to launch your dudeling into the air with reckless abandon. If your dash connects with the ball, your dudeling will send it flying! And, yes, he will take a shot at the opponent’s goal while dashing. This is a great way to sneak the ball past a stubborn defense.

However, using the dash ability will consume stamina. You might have noticed these lights at the top of the screen. This is your “stamina indicator.” Each player has a max of three stamina which will slowly recharge over time.

Now, dashing will use two stamina, so it’s good to dash only when necessary as stamina is per-player and not per-dudeling.

There’s one more action that consumes stamina: punching. Throwing a punch uses one stamina point. Use the Left and Right bumpers on your controller or J and L on your keyboard to punch your adjacent dudeling. You’ll see this little stun crown over their head, indicating that this guy cannot be used until he recovers. You can knock out neutral dudelings and take them out of play for a moment… but if the dudeling you’re controlling gets punched, you’ll be stuck in place until his expression returns to normal.

So to recap, stunned dudelings can’t be used to jump, dash, punch, or snap. And if you’re the one that got punched, you can’t move either!

And watch out. Some players can hold a grudge!

Keep in mind that while knocked out dudelings can’t be controlled, it’s possible to select one. So be aware of the status of your current dudeling.

Advanced Techniques

So let’s talk about some of the advanced techniques. And there are a few.

Movement

Pressing and holding left or right will automatically cycle through the next dudeling until you release the button. But it can be faster in short bursts to repeatedly press the directional button. Especially when you consider that there’s a short delay before autocycling starts.

Another important technique is leapfrogging. When you and your opponent are right next to each other, you can move towards them to jump over their dudeling. Then they can do the same to you. You can repeat this to move rapidly across the arena. However, keep in mind that you’re vulnerable to getting knocked out while you’re adjacent to your opponent!

You can change selection while your current dudeling in the air. This allows you to juggle your team. The ball will bounce off any airborne dudeling, regardless of if you control it or not. But keep in mind that if you move off, you won’t gain possession of the ball and he won’t throw it, either.

Another effective strategy is “goaltending.” In Classic mode, the dudelings on the left and right sides of the screen can effectively defend your goal for slow-moving balls. But we’ve found that using the second dudeling to be better for faster-moving balls. Snap to your goalie, move in one dudeling, and then jump to make clutch saves!

To activate a power-up, you need to have a ball in your possession collect it. If your dudeling touches a pickup on the map, though, it will de-spawn without activating. If you see an undesirable powerup, touch it with your dudeling to deprive your opponent or to prevent it from effecting the game!

But there’s more to discover when it comes to strategy. So let us know your discoveries on the Heavy Element forum.

Game Setup

As we touched on earlier, there are three game modes to choose from. But there are also many rules you can change to add some variety. For example, there are multiple ball types, like the beach ball, bowling ball, and the balloon. Each one has their own unique physics.

Then there are pickups. At launch, there are five to choose from. Extra Ball which adds an additional ball to the playfield, Random Ball which will change the ball type, Shrink which reduces the size of the ball, and Grow which increases the size of the ball, plus there’s a Mystery Pickup which will trigger one of the other four options.

You can also adjust the match point, the default ball type, dudeling’s jersies, and more.

One of my favorite match setups has to be what I call helium chaos, where you set the ball to balloon, size to random, the min balls to 10, and then duke it out with your opponent in a chaotic balloon free-for-all. There are tons of other possible rulesets you can mess with, so let us know your favorites in the forum!

Roadmap

We’re so excited for you to get your hands on Dudelings. It’s available NOW on Steam and Itch.io. We also want to hear from you. See, we have a lot of ideas for where we’d like to take Dudelings. We have outlines for new features. We’ve got new game modes in mind as well as new pickups, game balls, arenas, cosmetic items, and more.

We’ve got a forum over on forum.heavyelement.io and we’re monitoring the Steam and Itch forums as well!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on our Dudelings, improvements we can make, so be sure to leave a review on Steam!

Dudelings is the culmination of years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’ve been developing our skills and pouring ourselves into game development since 2020. And we’re so proud of this game. Despite its surface-level simplicity, there’s depth and a skill ceiling that we’re confident will find its niche. Pick up Dudelings today.

-- Chapters --
00:00 Introduction
00:14 How to Score
01:28 Strategy
02:18 Additional Moves
04:24 Advanced Techniques
05:12 Configurable Game Rules
05:29 Pickups