Indoor Baseball

TLDR: A solid baseball game with sound mechanics, unique playstyle, and enough RNG to keep it fresh that would benefit from some slight quality improvements. Story mode is enjoyable. DISCLAIMER: I don’t write many reviews but saw this game only had 6 and has been out about a month so I figured I would provide my thoughts for prospective buyers. I am an older gamer (80s) and have been playing baseball games since NES. I am a fan of 2 button baseball games and occasionally play some of the modern games. I am a big fan of the Japanese power pros franchise and the best baseball game of all time, Mario Baseball on GameCube. Didn’t use AI to write this. SUMMARY: You play 1v1 baseball inside various indoor locations. There is a quick play, story, season and a few other modes including some minigames (I think only available through story). You can choose your character which have varying stat loadouts. THE GOOD: Indoor baseball is a quick easy to play baseball game with simplified controls. It allows you to pitch, field, run and hit. The ability to free run as the runner is fun. Fielding is pretty straightforward, but the ability to dive feels natural and being able to throw the ball at the runner is tough but fun. The obstacles in the field feel like they are appropriate and allow decent amount of RNG to keep games fresh. Incorporation of a story mode has been the main draw for me to this game. The story mode is much longer than I expected and gives you incentive to push through a schedule of games at different locations. You get to unlock new players as well. NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: The elephant in the room is the lack of multiplayer. It seems such an obvious addition to this game, and I assume it will come eventually……. There aren’t any bugs, but I have noticed a few random things that have caused me to have to restart the game. Mainly it will stop recognizing my controller and default to only keyboard/mouse. This is always fixed by restarting the game. It only happened on the menus. Another small improvement is when you reach a base safely or are just touching the base as the runner it should light up. I have run past a base a couple times because I wasn’t sure I was on it yet and was tagged out because of it. Small change but would be helpful. The RNG on errors seems to be a little crazy. I have lost a couple of games because of multiple errors in an inning. I am fine with not being a perfect fielder, since you’re a kid playing indoor baseball, but sometimes it seems a bit unbalanced. VALUE: At $15 initially I thought it was a little overpriced. But now that I am a little further in, I think it’s a fair price. Story mode will keep me motivated enough to get value out of it, then will always have it as a game to pick up and play. If this ever hits a sale under $10 then it’s an easy choice for solid value. FINAL THOUGHTS: I am glad I picked up this game. I like having games to pick up and play randomly.