Yoot Saito's Odama Hands-On

Odama, which basically means "huge ball" in Japanese, is a game about samurai warfare...and pinball. We'll give you a moment to let that sink in.

Created by eccentric developer Yoot Saito (best known for SimTower, also known as Yoot's Tower), Odama is fundamentally a pinball game, and it bears all the basic traits of a good pinball game--realistic physics, the ability to tilt the board, and so on. However, the pinball happens to take place on a historical battlefield. And what you need to do, in order to help your army achieve victory against superior enemy odds, is use the odama--a gigantic metal ball--to bulldoze enemy forces, buildings, and defenses so that you can clear a path for your army's siege party to reach the enemy warlord. How's that for strange?

It's not just strange, though--it's fun. At E3, there's one challenging scenario available for play, so we dusted off our rusty pinball skills and gave it a go. We soon realized that Odama is basically a real-time strategy game. We needed to go use the odama to knock down enemy archer towers--we saw one player actually manage to cause a chain reaction, causing three towers in a row to collapse--and we also needed to use the odama to break a dam, causing a river to wash enemy forces away. Pressure soon begins to mount in the scenario as enemy cavalry comes stomping through the ranks. Your forces will handily repel the enemy, but whenever enemies breach the ranks and manage to squeeze between the pinball flippers, you lose some health. Run out of health and you lose the game.

You can send reinforcement troops using the right analog stick and tilt the gameworld using the left analog stick. As well, you may charge up the odama using the X button, causing it to turn red. When enemy forces are struck by the odama when it's in this state, they are converted to your side, and may be sent back out as reinforcements.

The gameplay is strategic and frantic at the same time, which is very cool. Destroyed structures are soon rebuilt by the enemy, forcing you to really sustain the offense or else find yourself caught in a war of attrition. Oh, and by the way--the odama kills your own troops, too, so that's another thing you need to worry about as you send the ball careening through the crowds.

Yoot Saito's Odama may very well be the best pinball-skills-teaching game we've ever played, and we've only played this one level. The game requires you to think tactically but also to be very accurate about directing the ball around the map, hopefully away from your forces. The feel of a classic pinball table is definitely here--there's the concept of ramps and bumpers and everything--and despite the modest graphics, the feel that there's a battle being waged is conveyed, as well. The game has a simple-enough concept, and the gameplay already feels pretty good, so we're not sure why Yoot Saito's Odama is slated to ship next year rather than this year. At any rate, we're looking forward to playing it a lot more.