Super Pole Riders, a twisted take on pole vaulting, is a cross between the sport, kung fu and multiplayer deathmatches, developer Bennett Foddy wrote on the PlayStation blog.
Foddy, developer of the keyboard-based running simulator QWOP, credits titles like California Games as his inspiration for Pole Riders, a Flash game available on his website. Super Pole Riders is one of four games in the Sportsfriends compilation currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. With Super Pole Riders, he's developing a "better, more complete version."
"When I showed the original game around the world, I would always think of little changes that could make the game better," he wrote. "I wanted the kung-fu kicks to be crunchier. I wanted the arenas to be more vertical, more interesting and complex. I wanted the game to be playable by four or even eight players at a time, for maximum chaos. When games were locked in a stalemate, I wanted the players to be able to resolve the match by swapping their poles out for spears, poleaxes and warhammers, for brutal and hilarious combat."
According to Foddy, this is par for the course in Sportsfriends.
"Hokra is a hockey game with no goals and no sticks," he wrote. "BaraBariBall is a volleyball game with no net, where the players routinely drown in a lake. J.S. Joust is a game that has no screen!"