Forget Lúcioball. Overwatch’s newest summer games are Pulse Bomb Volleyball and Hammond Uppercut Tennis.
These aren’t new game modes coming with Overwatch’s Summer Games starting later this week. Instead, they’re custom creations dreamed up by Overwatch players and fans. Reddit user PeteCone uploaded a clip of Pulse Bomb Volleyball to the Overwatch subreddit over the weekend, and Hammond Uppercut Tennis popped up shortly after that.
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The idea behind the games are simple, but pretty tricky to execute. Pulse Bomb Volleyball hinges on three characters in total—Reinhardt as the net, Tracer for the volleyball, and Genjis as the players. Here’s how it goes: the Tracer player pops her Pulse Bomb ultimate and tosses it at a Genji player. To keep the game going, the Genji players must use his Deflect ability to send the bomb flying back over the net. The team that drops it loses. It’s the ultimate game of hot potato, really.
Hammond Uppercut Tennis works similarly. (By the way, Reddit user heljordi, who uploaded the clip, called it Hammond Uppercut Volleyball, but we’ve taken the liberty to rename it. You’ll see why.) This summer game calls for Doomfists, Mercys, and a Hammond.
A Mercy emote starts the match, and one of the Doomfists punches the Hammond player right over the net, made of Mercy’s power beams. The Hammond player is allowed to touch the ground, which makes this more like tennis, where bouncing is allowed. (See? It had to be re-named.) It’s a little harder to tell when a side has lost with this game over Pulse Bomb Volleyball. Players will just have to make sure to designate an out-of-bounds area so that players can score points.
Lúcioball is good and all, but Overwatch’s player-base is impressively inventive with its new ways to play. You’ll be able to find these two games in Overwatch’s Custom Games list, or create your own. There are three days until the real Summer Games event begins, after all.
