#IDARB (short for I Drew a Red Box) began life as a unique experiment on Twitter. The developer posted a picture of a red box, hence the name, and encouraged users to give him ideas on how to make said box into a game. How that managed to turn into a pixel art, futuristic basketball(ish) e-sport game is beyond me, but hey, that’s social media for you.

 

Watch a game of IDARB for the first time and you could be forgiven for wondering what the hell is going on. The basic premise of the game is that there are two teams of between one and four players each and a goal at either end of the arena. As per most sports points are awarded for getting the ball into the other team’s goal.

The game doesn’t require a lot a time to learn the fundamentals. You move and aim using the left stick and jump around the arena at will. In possession you can either pass to a teammate or shoot and without the ball you can emit a blast of energy around your body to stun nearby opposition or make them drop the ball.

 

The real depth to the game though comes from the combo multipliers. Each successful pass without an interception builds up a multiplier which in turn increases the points granted on a goal. Also, scoring from further out or with skill shots such as ‘alley-oops’ will further increase the score bonus’ given. This means matches remain tense until the final whistle as one big play can turn a match completely on its head.

 

Naturally the game is at its best when played against real opponents. There is a single player mode tucked away in a sub menu but it is largely a throwaway inclusion and doesn’t include any tutorials on how to play. Therefore either local or online multiplayer matches are the way to go.

Roping in seven other friends on one screen for local matches is a riot and where IDARB really shines. Whether you’re winning or losing, you will be laughing hysterically the whole time and the game really lends itself to those recordable moments of epic triumph or even more epic fails.

 

Online the game should be a blast aswell but unfortunately at the time of writing this is has a couple of fairly major issues which prevent it from hitting full potential. The first is the age old problem of lag. In the games I played some were perfectly fine but others had very noticeable lag which for a game that requires fast reactions and twitch play, any slowdown is an issue. The other problem is that there is no matchmaking options, meaning if you search solo you will be put into a 1v1 game, if you search in a pair you will be put into a 2v2 game etc… This is arguably the biggest issue as it means people who can only get online by themselves have no option but to play fairly boring 1v1 matches. IDARB is at its best when there are two teams of four and hopefully they patch in an option to search for different game types fairly quickly.

 

My other slight issue with the game is that there is only one arena to play in. The background colours may change but the layout is the same. It would have been nice to see some other layouts to mix it up a bit.

 

When you are not playing matches the game has a couple of creations tools to play around with. You can use the character creator to create your own pixelated sprites. While not the most in depth editor ever seen it serves its purpose and you can create your favourite characters from other franchises with relative ease. There are already a number of preset characters ranging from Master Chief to Team 17’s Worms and others. You can also try you hand a creating a tune for the game using the built in music editor. It is again fairly basic but given to the right person some recognisable themes can be made.

It is clear the developers want the game to catch on in the E-sports realm. There is a live Twitter feed that runs along the bottom of the screen during matches and there are options to record and stream directly to Twitch from the game itself. Ultimately the games success will lie in whether it can crack into that elusive community. Because of this it seems to be a shrewd move by Microsoft to give it away for free as part of February’s Games with Gold promotion on Xbox One, meaning people who may not have heard of the game or given it a second glance will download it and give it a try with it being free throughout that month.

 

Overall, IDARB is a fun game and a riot in local multiplayer. It is just a shame that the online issues currently hold the game back. Hopefully the developers can fix this aspect fairly quickly and if they can I can see the game becoming an online hit. If the issues persist once it is released to the general public then I see it fading out fairly quickly.

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