Botolo is fighty sportsball from The Floor Is Jelly creator

That ↑ is a good look for a competitive local multiplayer game, isn't it? That's Botolo [official site], the new game from Ian Snyder, who you might remember for lovely squishy platformer The Floor Is Jelly. Botolo is a streamlined fighty ballsport about trying to grab and keep control of the ball while the other player, y'know, also wants to do that. It will launch next week but as I spent part of my morning muttering "Gosh-o!" while looking at it, I thought you might fancy that too. Here, check out the trailer:

I must visit this magical rotoscoping bar.

So! The goal is to keep control of the ball inside point zones to capture them, fending off interference from opponents. Go next to a player and hit the 'Action' button and you'll grab it off them. Though if they hold their Action button at the correct time, they'll block your attempt and pick up points while you're knocked back. (They can't block infinitely, of course.) And that's how sports works.

Snyder explained in an e-mail to us:

"It's a local multiplayer game that's all about mind-reading and competition. It takes inspiration from competitive games like Street Fighter, but attempts to smooth the learning curve for new players while keeping enough depth to remain competitive for experience players. It's an attempt to break fighting games down to just their fundamentals and reconstitute them as something totally alien without losing that core competitive experience. I wanted a fighting game that even I could play."

Botolo is coming to Windows and Mac on Thursday, December 15th via Steam, Itch, and Humble. It's made for local multiplayer but will have AI bots for Nigel Nae-Pals.