Last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo was designed to showcase the yearly lineups of billion-dollar publishers like Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive. Undaunted by those behemoths' presence, three small developers brought alternative sports titles to E3 (and its Scottish equivalent), demoing their latest prototypes to the media:
 

#IDARB, developed by Other Ocean Interactive, is a fictional four-on-four team sport with the simple objective of shooting a round ball into a rectangular goal. Each score can award up to five points, based on the distance of the shot.

The game plans to ship with plenty of prebuilt teams modeled after pop culture icons, but gamers can visit #IDARB's website right now if they want to start designing their own playable characters. Created characters generate a QR code, which can be scanned into the game via the Xbox One's Kinect camera.


In Action Button Entertainment's Videoball, players steer a small triangle with the left joystick while launching a variety of projectiles by holding down the A button and releasing it at different power levels.

Square blocks can be generated to defend your goal, while triangle shots are used to push balls across the goal line or directly attack other players.

Unlike in #IDARB, every goal in Videoball rewards one point, regardless of how far out the scoring shot was made. The game's player load (two-on-two) and court space are similarly downsized.

The E3 demo build includes nine unique arenas with different stage layouts, plus it lets players set the maximum number of balls allowed on the field.


While Bodycheck wasn't present at E3, it did appear at last week's goNORTH festival in Inverness, Scotland. This Thursday, developer Ludometrics will be bringing the game to the Radius Festival in London, England.

Along with the punching attacks shown in the early footage, Bodycheck also aims to include magic spells and referee bribery. Ludometrics is targeting a maximum of four human players per match, both offline and online.

Are you interested in playing these alternative sports titles? Give your take in the comment section below.