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A caveat up front: while I think I have experienced much of what De Mambo has to offer, it is entirely possible that I am like a child, as Newton once put it, playing with shells on a stretch of beach while behind me an entire ocean roars and tugs at the shore, unseen. De Mambo feels like quite a focused game when you're jabbing away at the single button it is largely built around, lost in the red-blooded moment. But it also feels like a vast game, menus filled with jokes and throwaway animations, "bits of business" as the Laurel and Hardy people used to call it. I can imagine offshoots and flourishes and entire side-modes hidden in there somewhere waiting to be unlocked. And yes, Newton to Laurel and Hardy in a single paragraph? This too feels entirely apt.Anyway. I think De Mambo is billiards, if the billiard balls hated each other. Each character in this multiplayer brawler is a rubbery, pixelated circle with a face, and each can jump around the snug single-room arenas relying on a single button to pull off a range of attacks. Prod the button and you get a sort of poke move. Hold it down a bit longer and you get a brisk 360 degree swipe. Hold it down even longer and you get a charged shot that races off in four directions. Hold it too long and you get a bust: no attack and a period of paralysis.
In the main mode you use these three attacks as you leap around - another button - and attack your fellow players (two players is good times, four is an absolute riot). Attacks don't damage the other players, but they send them pinging about and smashing any parts of the environment they come into contact with. Eventually, they will bust through one of the walls of the arena, in which case leaving the arena entirely becomes a possibility. Get a ring out from the top, bottom, or sides of the screen and you lose a life. It's billiards, a bit of Smash Bros, and a lot of Wario Ware in the pixelated madness.
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