Steel Ball Brawl — the rulebook

The match

Two 90-second halves. Most points wins — and goals are only one way to get them.

Goal · 10 points: Beat the keeper through the arch. Every hall has one at each end.
Injuring an opponent · 10 points: Hit a cyborg until his health is gone and he leaves on a stretcher — or struggles up, if the bench is empty. Violence is a scoring play.
Wall stars · 2 each, +10 for all five: Shoot the stars mounted on the far wall. The opponent can shoot them back out of your tally.
Wall loops · ×1.5 scoring, then ×2: Throw the ball into either wall loop to claim a scoring multiplier. Only one side holds it at a time — an enemy transit cuts it back, then takes it for themselves.

The steel hall, mid-brawl

Controls

One stick, four buttons, and everything else is what you do with them.

Left stick: Move. Control auto-switches to the cyborg nearest the ball.
Switch: Take another cyborg. Hold the stick a direction and you get the nearest man that way; let it go and you get whoever can reach the ball. In your own danger zone it toggles you on and off the keeper, as often as you like.
Throw / Shoot: Tap to hurl it flat, hold to loft it. Under a high ball the same button jumps for the catch.

Pass: Tap for a flat pass, hold to arc it over heads. A yellow telegraph ring shows who you are aiming at before you let go.
Aftertouch: Keep the stick held while the ball flies — passes and shots bend.
Dash: Hold to sprint. It burns stamina — and a dashing hit is the heaviest contact in the game.
Carrying: Holding the ball slows you, a little at first and more the longer you keep it. Pass, or be caught.

Control & settings

One setting changes how the whole game plays: CONTROL decides who you are on the pitch.

Auto & Assist

AUTO keeps you on whoever is nearest the ball, every moment — faithful to the old-school arcade feel. ASSIST (the default) only switches you when possession actually changes hands, so you are never yanked off a run mid-stride.

Commit

Assist, plus a grace beat: when a teammate wins the ball, the AI plays him briefly while you stay your own cyborg — finish the hit you were lining up, or press SWITCH to take the carrier at once. The window always expires; the AI never holds the ball for you.

Manual

Nothing ever switches you automatically. Gaining the ball yourself still hands you the carrier — everything else is the SWITCH button, with the stick held to aim at the man you want. Full control, no safety net.

Stance: Your team's posture — DEFENCE, BALANCED or OFFENCE — changeable mid-match from the pause panel. TACTICS remains the full picker.
Ball marker & mate arrows: A tether under the ball (subtle, bold, or off) and edge arrows pointing at off-screen teammates — always, only while carrying, or never.

Handedness & joystick: Mirror the whole control cluster for left thumbs; let the stick float under your touch or stay fixed.
Difficulty: Scales the AI — including how human its keeper is — and the XP your matches pay.

Contact

There are no fouls. There are outcomes.

Barge their back: Run into a carrier from behind and you strip the ball loose. The ball never teleports into your hands — it spills, and the brawl decides.
Side barge: A 50/50 — defence wins the ties.
Head-on: A contest, not a free tumble. The carrier can brace — and bracing costs him stamina.
Dashing hits: Smash through even a head-on brace. If you see the charge coming, you can still dodge.
Tackle: A slide. Trip the carrier and the ball spills; miss and you are on the deck while play runs over you.

A dashing hit, landing

Holding the ball

Carrying draws your guard ring — the rulebook of the next two seconds, drawn on the deck.

The lit arc faces the way you move. A hit that lands on the lit arc is resisted: you keep the ball and play on.
Every resist spends stamina and pauses its refill. Run the meter empty and the next hit lands clean.
A chevron flashes on the side a charge is coming from — your warning, if you are quick.
Your back is never covered. Keep moving.
On HARD the ring is hidden. The rules stay exactly the same.

The pitch

The arena is a participant. Five halls, each with its own idea of fair play.

Domes: Two of them — bounce the ball off their crowns for angles no defender covers.
Gates: Teleport the ball across halfway. What goes in one side comes out the other, still yours.
Electro bumpers: Electrify your throw: the charged ball tackles one foe on contact (+1 more per lit loop dot). A steal or a stopped ball kills the charge.

Brutal halls: Division 1 territory. Mines arm on the deck, every hazard runs faster, and a spent mine re-arms in seconds. Reaching Division 1 unlocks them outside career, permanently.
The themes: Steel, ice, inferno, swamp and castle — earned up the XP ladder. Ice slides, the inferno burns, the swamp bogs you down.

Gear & squad

Pick-ups land on the deck mid-match; the squad work happens between fixtures.

Pick-ups: Coins pay credits. Freeze, zap, shield and door swing a defence — the door seals your goal behind an energy gate for six seconds. Reverse, slow and reduce hinder the other side; manic and increase help yours. Grab tugs the ball to you, transport warps it.
Armour: Eight pieces, each boosting one attribute for the match. Collect them on the pitch; fit your look in the Plating Bay.
Subs: Pause and rotate any man for the bench. A wounded wrecker keeps his wounds — but stops gifting injury points to the other side.
Gym & transfers: Career gold trains attributes in the gym and signs star cyborgs on the transfer market.

The gym, between fixtures

XP, gems & gold

Three currencies, three separate jobs — nothing you buy is power over another player.

XP — what you earn

Every match pays XP: more for winning, more for scoring. It climbs the ladder, and the ladder unlocks the things you play with — new halls and new formations, from 1,000 XP up to 18,000.

Gems — what you wear

A flat 200 a match, win or lose, plus achievement and ladder bounties. Spent in the Plating Bay on kits, trims, shells, ball finishes, trails, goal celebrations and emblems. Looks only — never power.

Gold — what the club runs on

The career purse. Match rewards and prize money pay for gym training and transfers — and it resets with the career, because it belongs to the club, not to you.

Divisions

The career is a ladder with two rungs and a trapdoor.

Everyone starts in Division 2: Fourteen rounds against seven rivals. Finish first and you have not been promoted — you have earned a promotion playoff against the team second from bottom of Division 1. Win that, and you are up. The incumbent keeps the draw.
Division 1 plays for keeps: The top flight plays in the brutal halls — mined decks, faster hazards. Finish 7th and you fight a survival playoff (a draw keeps you up). Finish 8th and you drop straight back down.
Reaching it once counts forever: The first time you make Division 1, the brutal halls unlock outside career, permanently — relegation and career restarts cannot take them back.

The career hub