BEASTIE BALL

The Chicory team return for a whole new ballgame

For a long time, Pokémon existed essentially in a category of one. While that's changed in recent years, with indie games offering everything from traditionalist to trolling takes on the genre (Coromon, Cassette Beasts, Palworld), we've not paid any of them much mind Game Freak's prolific output being more than enough to scratch the creature-collecting itch. But we're willing to change that policy for any game whose description includes 'from the team that made Chicory.

That game boasted a rare mix of Nintendo magic and unique personality, reinventing the top-down Zelda format as a story about art and self-doubt. Beastieball reunites designer Greg Lobanov, artist Alexis Dean-Jones, musician Lena Raine and A Shell In The Pit audio maestros Em Halberstadt and Preston Wright for another colourful tale, riffing on elsewhere in the Nintendo canon. Not that this was the original intent, exactly - Lobanov sought to make a game about teamwork in a sporting context.

"The creature stuff just turned out to be this amazing solve for so many problems," he says. "It just fit so naturally, like a glove, for all these other things we wanted to do." Key to those aims is the way relationships develop between Beasties. As teammates play together, they can become partners, besties, sweethearts or rivals a decision that is kept out of your control. "We've seen some players where every Beastie on their team is in love with each other," Lobanov says of the game's playtesters. "And others where there's no other relationship but rivals they all hate each other." It's intended to feel organic, a form of "emergent storytelling" that's equal parts XCOM and pet sim. This harks back to why Lobanov fell for Pokémon in the first place, squinting at Game Boy visuals that were barely more than liquid-crystal smudges. "But I would project so much personality and story into those characters. And so this game is kind of riffing more on that side of it."