Battleball

Battleball began with a simple question - how do you create an experience that is genuinely exciting for guests, while also making sense for the operator running it?

Battleball

Running escape rooms, adventure golf and competitive socialising venues taught us that people love getting drawn into a game, taking on their friends and feeling that how they play really counts. It also showed us where group activities can struggle. Some activities give a brilliant experience to a small team but have limited capacity, others can accommodate more people but leave most of the group watching and waiting. We wanted every person to be playing, competing and contributing at the same time.

That idea became Battleball - a modular collection of physical and digital games, all connected by one ball, one RFID Battlepass and one live scoring system. But what really ties the whole experience together is the stand out feature - The sabotage!

Players begin at a self-service kiosk, where they register and receive their RFID Battlepass and ball. At each game players scan in, insert their ball and watch short video instructions before the action starts. When they finish, they collect their ball and move freely to another game. There is no fixed route, and they can replay any challenge as often as they like. Only their best score on each game counts, so there is always a reason to have one more go.

The six opening games all use the ball differently. Revolver loads it into a gun and fires it at digital targets. React sends it down a physical track while players race to hit targets at exactly the right moment. Balance challenges them to guide it through increasingly difficult scoring zones, while Capture launches balls into the air to be caught and banked. Match tests speed and recognition, and Digiball takes the competition onto a digital playing field.

The part that really gives Battleball its personality is the sabotage. Opportunities appear during every game, allowing players to disrupt their opponents at exactly the wrong moment. They might reduce somebody’s visibility, remove the colours from their targets, interfere with their controls or temporarily stop them from scoring.

After each game, players can scan their Battlepass at the Battleboard to see their individual game scores and overall position. The leaderboard currently ranks players at Rivals Social, but the technology is built to connect scores globally as more Battleball venues open. Ultimately, somebody playing in Canterbury will be competing with Battleball players anywhere in the world.

At Rivals Social, nine four-player games allow 36 guests to play simultaneously during a 45 minute session without needing any extra staffing. That is our opening configuration, but because Battleball is modular, it can be adapted to different spaces and expanded without changing the technology at its heart.

We designed, programmed, fabricated and installed Battleball in house because we wanted control over the complete experience, from the feel of a physical mechanism to the moment a score appears on the Battleboard.

The result is an attraction built around participation rather than waiting, maximising every guest’s active game time and making the experience feel like exceptional value. Families can play without younger or older members being left behind, corporate groups quickly become obsessed with the leaderboard, and every player leaves with a score they want to beat. That combination of physical play, responsive technology, tactical sabotage and genuine replayability is what makes Battleball right for Game On.