Volley Pals Review

Volley Pals is a simplistic, 1 button and a half, volleyball arcade game where players can either play 2 vs 2, 1 vs 2 or 1 vs 1, solo or with friends, matches. You can set the number of points and select which field to play. As you progress you’ll be able to unlock new play areas. The reason I specify 1 button and a half is that you’ll be using the joystick to move and the A button to hit the ball.

What makes this virtual take on volleyball interesting is that each unlockable field has a new and unique gameplay mechanic that will impact the gameplay/match. For example, playing on the moon removes all notion of gravity meaning you can jump higher and the ball will slowly come back down or even invade your opponents’ side of the terrain. You can set the ball hit limit, time limit and score limit for each match.

Volley Pals has a cutesy, cartoon visual. Character movements are very limited and they move as if they were made of two-dimensional cardboard. I understand this isn’t meant to be a full-on realistic gaming experience, but it really gives it an amateur feel; kind of like the first game a new game developer would make in his basement. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Character design is also limited as some characters appear twice with a different color palette. The soundtrack is fine; sounds like typical stock music that’d you hear in a generic Saturday morning cartoon.

The game’s core issue is the simplicity of it all which makes it boring, very quickly. Given the number of buttons on a modern controller, there’s no excuse for not having at least two functional buttons/actions; you can only do one type of hit meaning there’s zero strategies here instead of being able to diverse attacks by either doing bumps, volleys, and spikes. Solo or with friends, this shallow experience won’t last for long.

Volley Pals is the shovelware at its finest. Monotonous, linear, gameplay-free experience. It feels like it was developed for mobile devices (would be better off there). Even for like 5GBP and selling this as a part game, it’s quite a shallow experience. Hell, the Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball series has more depth and gameplay than this. Unless it becomes available via Game Pass or in dire need of a volleyball game, this is a pass.