Spikair volleyball is an awesome Haikyu inspired steam deck volleyball game

So there I was with a brand new Steam Deck in hand, ready to finally see what all the fuss was about when it came to PC gaming. Like many console gamers, I’d heard the stories – that Steam would supposedly have tens of thousands of games, of all kinds of quality – and I was ready to find out for myself. But before I got to the good stuff before delving into Neon White, Valheim, or Frostpunk for the first time, I needed to know: does Steam have any good volleyball games?

It turns out that Steam has a lot of volleyball games. I wouldn’t use ‘good’ to describe most of them – horny is probably a better term, which I’ve since learned from my friends who play a lot of PC games is an appropriate description for much of what you can find on Steam . And, admittedly, horny has its place, but that’s not what I want from a volleyball game right now. No, I want the excitement of executing a combo attack, the satisfaction of executing a quick one that upsets my opponent, and the joy of reading an attacker good enough to dig up a peak and keep a rally going. When it comes to volleyball, there is no greater pleasure than its brain games.

And wouldn’t you know, I found it. It was like a dozen games down, but I found it it: Spikair Volleyball. It is an upcoming volleyball simulator that will launch in early access later this year. There is a free demo on Steam where you can play fast-paced games against a computer-controlled opponent that usually last between two and six minutes.

Luckily the opposing setter wasn’t right next to the net, so I didn’t have to worry about a dump attack.

I put over 22 hours into the demo at the time of writing. It is easily my most played game on my Steam Deck.

Developed by Choc Abyss – a studio of two: Clément Chardevel and Joé Chollet – Spikair Volleyball is one of those easy to learn, but hard to master, games. “I wanted people to play our game,” Chollet told GameSpot. “We have little mechanics that take more time to learn. But the basics – like placing the ball – are simple. You just press A.”

In Spikair, each match is four-on-four and you control all four players on your side of the field. Similar to real world volleyball, your goal is to make the ball hit the ground on the opponent’s side with an attack, scoring a point. An attack can only begin if you manage to receive the ball and pass it successfully to your setter, so that you can then send your setter to get the ball to the center blocker, back row receiver, or outer batter – all of which can nail the ball.

Just pressing the required buttons in the correct order is enough to play, but the correct timing of pressing those buttons can change the speed of the ball, allowing you to perform more advanced attacks, such as a hard-to-block quick spike. You have to be careful though, because the opposite is also true – a little mis-timing will lead to a bad pass or a weak attack, and if the timing is completely wrong, your players will miss the ball completely.

Chollet and Chardevel looked to many other volleyball games when designing Spikair, with the 1992 Hyper V-Ball as the primary source of inspiration. “[Volleyball] is a mind game,” said Chollet. “It’s not a sport. It’s a mind game. And so we were talking about a 6v6 vs 4v4 format, and we chose 4v4 because it was much easier for us to do and because Hyper V-Ball only has four players, and still managed that 6v6 indoor [volleyball] feeling, those are all mind games – the block versus the set and the spiker versus the defender.”

In Spikair, there are three potential attackers to look out for in defense (four if you count a setter dump, where the setter simply tips the ball over the net by itself instead of passing it to a spiker). But the game makes the process more complex by allowing each spiker to spike in three different ways: there is a normal spike, a short spike, and a long spike. In addition, the spiker can forgo a spike to instead tip the ball over a block in three different ways: a normal tip, a short tip, and a long tip. The spiker can also change the timing of their attack, purposely hitting a smigge sooner or later – not so much that they miss, but enough to hit the ball at a different speed.

There are also multiple services in Spikair.

So even though there are only four moves to remember in defense – block, short reception, normal reception and long reception – there are actually dozens of outcomes to prepare for. Your center blocker can block, and then your back row player can stand in place to receive the ball normally, dive for the ball if it’s spiked straight down or tipped short, or step back to get the bump the ball if it falls off the ball blocker or is tipped/tipped for a long time. And once you take an action, you have to wait a while before doing anything else. So you make split-second decisions and hope for the best. For example, if it looks like the opponent’s spiker is going short, diving too early could be the difference between continuing the rally and your opponent scoring.

This largely means that your job on offense is to use your setter to trick the defense into blocking the wrong spiker and then use your spikers to hit it to a spot the back row player won’t in time to achieve. On defense, try to use your blocker to pressure opponent’s setter to rush into bad setup to dodge your block and then read the other spiker’s approach to correct your back row player position to receive the attack. It’s two people trying to beat each other in back-to-back matches of Rock, Paper, Scissors, and whoever manages to do better (or get lucky) gets the point.

Spikair also takes a lot of inspiration from Haikyu, a very popular shonen volleyball manga/anime (which you should read/watch if you haven’t already). “The entire animation of the spike, the player’s attack in our game, is based on [Haikyu’s] Ushijima,” Chollet said. “I was watching the anime frame by frame and I was like, ‘Okay, this is perfect’ for a side view of Ushijima attacking.”

In Haikyu, the game in which protagonist Shōyō Hinata takes on Wakatoshi Ushijima can even be mimicked somewhat in Spikair. The Spikair demo pits you against computer-controlled opponents in five difficulty levels, with different teams on each team facing each other. On normal difficulty, you play as the United States while taking on Italy, while on Extreme you play as Brazil and Poland. When playing on Final difficulty, you play as Hinata’s team, Karasuno High, and your opponent is Ushijima’s Shiatorizawa. Completely stopping Ushijima with a well-timed block from center blocker Kei Tsukishima feels just as rewarding to do in-game as it does to see in the manga/anime.

Currently, computer controlled opponents are all you get in Spikair. The full game isn’t out yet, so the demo is the only way to play. Choc Abyss plans to launch the game in early access later this year, and much more will be available with the release, including offline player-vs-player matches. Online multiplayer may come later, but the studio focuses on other aspects of the game first, such as a career mode, player customization (including the option to have female players on your team), and player characteristics.

Attributes will indicate how well each individual player on your team performs, ranging from how effectively they can peak to how much wiggle room they have to deliver an ideal pass. As of the demo, all players in Spikair control and behave the same, so you don’t have to worry about that anymore. But when it’s finally added, it’s sure to create an even greater level of complexity to the sport’s mind game.

Until then, I’ll keep playing the Spikair Volleyball demo. I’m sure I’ll go to all the other games on my Steam Deck at some point, but for now this is enough for me. Maybe I’ll go back to Switch Sports for a while so I can keep yelling at everyone to play Switch Sports Volleyball wrong and use Read Block.

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