I can’t say enough that mobile gaming is so fascinating. Apple’s App Store is filled to the brim with a constantly updated cavalcade of bite-sized, unique video games. Another piece of fun added to the collection is Soccer Physics, a goofy and simple arcade sports game from developer Otto-Ville Ojala. It’s a ton of addictive, hilarious fun that only gets more enjoyable as more players are crowded around whatever mobile device is being used.

Soccer Physics functions on a 2D plane, giving players a single button to control the movements of two soccer players. Thirty seconds of playing around with the one button is enough to inform players of how the bizarre controls function. No matter how much one plays, the controls never really make sense, but the magic of Soccer Physics is that this is funny rather than frustrating. The controls are constantly difficult to deal with, but they’re difficult for everyone and consistent, so it’s not problematic. Watching the nonsensically-animated soccer players flail around hopelessly is an infinite pleasure.

Just enough is done to make Soccer Physics constantly fresh and fun. After each goal is laboriously squeezed out, randomized, silly changes are applied to the game. One match, players may find themselves without heads, while another match the heads will be attached but they’ll want to be yanked off in frustration over attempts to get a beach ball into a shrunken goal. The voice-overs after goals had me and my friends cracking up over the ridiculousness, and the game’s cute visual style matches well. It’s a nice touch that the ethnicity of the players is switched up after each goal; the genders don’t switch, which is unfortunate, but one can’t have everything. The game is always able to elicit a laugh and a smile.

The game can be played single player against an appropriately intelligent computer, which is a fun time apt for quick, solitaire downtime. However, if two or four players can join together (preferably on a tablet for obvious reasons), the game gets much more entertaining because there are human beings to have a laugh with. There is an optional mode that gives two buttons to each team, each button controlling a respective player, opening the game up to more precise two-player gameplay or chaotic four-player fun. The game is most enjoyable when players have to struggle with just one button for two players, and crowding four people along one side of a horizontal tablet (or, God forbid, a phone) is a chore, so the one-button two-player mode is really where it’s at.

It’s a great game that I always have a great time showing people. It’s the kind of experience that would stay shackled to the niche realm of flash games if not for Apple’s popularization of mobile gaming. Huzzah for that.

This piece was originally posted on “The Gaming Groove.”

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