Game Review: Toasterball

By Al

Players: 1-4 (Local)
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC

Toasterball is a wacky sports game that sees you take on the role of a toaster in a game that is reminiscent of table tennis, but with bread. It was originally launched on Kickstarter back in 2020, was funded, and is now available on the Nintendo Switch following a release on Steam. We're always up for wacky multiplayer experiences so we decided to check it out and see if this has what it takes to be your next go-to party game, or if you're better toasting your bread on the stovetop instead! Let's head on over to Breadington Square and get this game started!

The match of the century!

The Rumble In The Jungle!

There's obviously no real story here, but I do think it's worth mentioning that there are clearly humans watching every single game of Toasterball, so... make of that what you will. Anyhow, Toasterball is a singles or doubles game that pits two teams against each other, The Burners and The Defrosters. You have 14 toaster athletes to choose from, each with their own unique personalities and backstories. If you're a solo player you get some other toasters to interact with, but more on that later. Toasterball isn't the most complex game, but you wouldn't know that from seeing the five different arenas where games take place. These range from a large indoor arena, all the way to a field right on the beach. You pick your toaster, pick your game mode, pick your arena, and you're all set to play some Toasterball!

Most of the variants unlocked in an hour.

Oh look, basketball!

Toasterball reminds me a bit of the game I Am Bread, to the point that I actually looked up to see if this was probably a spiritual successor to it. I'm not sure exactly why I had this idea in my head, since they share very little beyond the physics-based gameplay and the occasional presence of bread, but the connection was there in my brain the entire time I was playing. Your goal in a game of Toasterball is very simple. One side gets to serve the ball, then both try to get it past the other team and in the goal opposite their side of the arena. These goals are usually protected by barrier blocks that take three hits to remove. Once these are clear, the next shot in will score you a point. The first team to reach five points wins the game, and then you can start the process all over again. It may sound like a simple game, and honestly it is at its core, but there are a lot of factors that make it so that no two games are ever the same. Also, I said earlier that there is no story in the game, but there is a cool tutorial video that you can watch in-game to get to know the rules.

To keep things interesting, each round of the game is played in ways different from the standard Toasterball rules. These random variants can change up the arena, add obstacles, and might even alter what you need to do in order to score. These variants are all over the place and include transforming the arena to an icy area complete with a blizzard, taking away the arena's gravity, adding in Portal-like portals, giving you infinite toast to play with, turning the floor into lava, changing the goals into basketball hoops, and even changing up the graphics to look like a take on Pong. There are several more variants than this, with a total of 23 besides the core rules. Some of them are annoying, some feel like a totally different game, and all of them thankfully add a layer of unpredictability that can level the playing field in a Mario Kart-esque fashion. Unfortunately you can't normally choose which changes are going to happen in the next round, nor are you able to play a "straight" game of Toasterball that only has the core rules throughout. There is a way to do this in a specific game mode, but not within the main default one.

Some inner city barricades.

These are all the arenas.

Now let's talk about how one scores. While you have the option to choose between 14 different toasters, I don't think there's any differences between them beyond aesthetics and flavor text. They all play the same, and all feature the same controls. Speaking of which, you control the toaster by manipulating the left or right slots with the shoulder buttons. Each button moves down one side, and the force they give off when you release the button is relative to how long you held it. If you just move one side or the other, you can slide along to the side, if you press both at the same time, you hop upwards. You can combine these moves to slide then jump, or jump then throw yourself backwards, and so on. You can even get yourself flipped over if you're not careful, but you can right yourself by just using one slot until you're right side up again. If you have bread in your toaster, which depends on the round variant, you can also shoot that upwards with each of the slot presses. You can also hold down the toast to prepare for a defensive hit, but you can burn the toast to the point where it breaks after hitting the ball if you've had it in the toaster for too long. Also, the bread doesn't necessarily return to you straight away, and you can lose the bread by moving before it lands, or it being knocked too far away from you when it shoots up. While there are ways to get your bread back if it lands in the arena, it's usually gone for the round once it's out of your toaster. Since your goal is to hit the ball into the other goal, and to protect your own, this means you'll be hopping around like mad to make sure you're always winning. While the controls are very simple, there's actually a lot of skill that you can develop, especially when it comes to manipulating some of the random variants to your favor when they pop up.

I didn't know I was playing Pong!

My original main, Rusty Jack.

Toasterball at its heart is a multiplayer game, and it works best when you have friends around to play with you. You'll do a lot of screaming and yelling between players as the most random game of Toaster Tennis takes place on-screen. The action is so fast paced and unpredictable that you'll soon find that random luck and chance will win as many games as skill and prior knowledge of the game's mechanics. Unfortunately all multiplayer must come in the form of couch co-op as there is no online play here at all. All four players can easily play on one console if you're on the Switch, but this not-so-modern setup made it that I was only ever able to try out a handful of two-player games for this review. I don't want to make it sound like there's no single player mode though, but it feels like an afterthought since you can only play against the "main" toasters in multiplayer mode. All AI controlled opponents are the same in each single player game, their names being Beep, Boop, and Bleep-Bloop. You can adjust how difficult they are, but you can't make it so that they're a specific character. This feels like a weird missed opportunity, especially when you consider how little content is actually here, and the fact that the toasters themselves aren't exactly unique when it comes to in-game skills and stats.

Besides the normal game mode, where you play a single game with the standard rules, and the multiplayer, which is the same game but with other human players, there's a Custom Mode. Each time you encounter a new gameplay variant in the main game, it's unlocked for use in the Custom Mode. Custom Mode lets you pick and choose which variants are in any one game, and the order they appear in. Besides this you can adjust the scoring requirements, and even change up things like the number of hits that it takes to knock out the goal blocks. It was actually here that I learned that a toaster can explode if it gets hit by stage hazards too many times. Since only a few of the variants have hazards that can actually harm you, this was something I never saw during my time with the game. There is no other in-game content besides the main game, multiplayer, and the Custom Mode. I longed for a tournament of some sort, be it a Story Mode one or just a custom one to make between me and my friends, but I've literally laid out everything that is in the game by this point. There aren't even other teams you can play as, nor can you create your own, you're stuck with The Burners and The Defrosters the entire time. I fell in love with Toasterball as soon as I played my first game, but it only took a few hours for me to realize that it offers only the most bare bones of experiences.

The opening tutorial movie.

Infinite bread!

I'm going to cover the graphics and sound in one section, since I have pretty much the same things to say about both of them. I found that both were serviceable, did their job well, and never let me down. The game ran smoothly on the Nintendo Switch, even in Handheld Mode, and there was never even the slightest hint of slowdown. Meanwhile the music was pretty cool, but there wasn't a single track that I could remember after I turned off the game. I don't want to call either of them mediocre, since I did enjoy both the graphic style and the sound design, but neither of them really stood out to me in any meaningful way. That said, I must give credit to the character designer, as they really made the 17 (when counting the AI ones) toasters all look unique to each other. Their looks even add to their backstories. Adrea Phelippes is made of stone, and thus was created in 1485 and is pretty ancient. "Rusty Jack" was manufactured in 1885, and looks like he would burn your house down if you left him toasting unattended. There's a lot of character here, even if it doesn't extend into meaningful changes with the gameplay. While I'm on the subject of toasters, there is a cool "Athletes" section where you can read the backstories I only lightly touched upon here. A nice touch that felt would've been better used in a game that had a Story Mode of some sort.​

It's all about the blizzards!

The floor is lava!

As a multiplayer game, Toasterball has a lot of replayability. I can definitely see myself pulling this out at parties or get-togethers when I have at least four friends around to play it. To this end I love that it's available on the Switch. I'm not sure how one would work the multiplayer in the Steam version, so I'd have to give the edge to the console release here. That said, I can't help but feel that Toasterball itself feels like an extended minigame. Sort of like a random Mario Party minigame that someone decided to flesh out a bit and sell for $9.99. I don't mean to say it's not worth picking up or playing, just that the overall lack of content might be due to the developers simply not knowing where else they could take the concept. That said, $9.99 is not a bad price at all if you're just looking for a good party game. It's just that I can see many players getting bored after giving the game a few rounds. The entire time I was playing I thought that more stages, toasters, or game modes would unlock, but they never did. You have 14 toasters, 24 gameplay variants, 5 arenas, 3 AI opponents, and only 2 main game modes. That's it. I truly wonder how long this will stay on anyone's shelf, and I hope that a future update adds a more content like other teams or a tournament mode, but I highly doubt that will actually happen.

I like the Defrosters more.

I played until I got to see my toaster explode.

I find it very hard to give Toasterball a recommendation based on the amount of content in the game, but it's just so much fun that I think I have to despite my misgivings towards it. It really is a good game, and my first few hours with it were great. There just wasn't a lot that I found that kept me going, and I played it for far longer than I would've normally simply because I had to write a review for it. I say that if you're looking for a new party game, if you play multiplayer more than solo stuff, or maybe if you just like the idea of a silly sports game that involves toasters, then pick this one up. If you're looking for a game that's going to give you countless hours of fun for months on end, then this might not be the game for you. Then again, it might do just that for the right group of people. If you do end up grabbing it though, be sure to meet me on the Toasterball field! Oh, and stay away from Leni Ofter, he's my toaster!

Check Out Toasterball on The Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/toasterball-switch/

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Story: B (Just for the funny toaster backstories!)
Gameplay: B+
Graphics: B
Music/Sound: B
Value: C-

Overall: B

Pros:
+ A fun take on a simple Pong-type game that has one of the silliest premises I've seen in a while.
+ The toaster athletes each have a surprising amount of character and backstory.
+ 24 randomly chosen gameplay variants make it so that no two games ever play out the same way.
+ Very fun in multiplayer, to the point that you'll probably end a friendship or two over a game!

+/- Some of the game modes have the "blue shell in Mario Kart" feel to them when it comes to random last minute score changes.

Cons:
- Multiplayer is local only with no online at all. (At least on the Switch.)
- Single player is a very thin experience with only the same three AI controlled opponents available.
- There is very little content overall in the game, and you'll quickly experience everything the game has to offer.
- There's no Tournament Mode which seems like an obvious addition.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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You're welcome!