Sumoscience

Sumoscience is a game for people who want to learn more about sumo. It models the physics (forces/collisions) between the wrestlers. You can do a frontal pushout, belt pushout, slapdowns, and throws. You can practice in the practice room or try your skills in a one or two player tournament. In the practice room, you can change the attack style and level of your opponent to practice how to deal with certain attacks. You can also select automatic play to watch the computer play itself.

In the game, you are the wrestler with the yellow belt. On the right side is a first-person view of your opponent with buttons for various attacks.

1. Chest attack: Press the red button the push the chest. You need to be moving forward for this to be effective.
2. Slapdown: Drag down the yellow button and your arm will reach for their head and attempt to pull them down. After your arm makes contact with their head (button turns blue), you need to move backward to give more force to your pull. This only works if your opponent is moving forward.
3. Grip Belt: You can press the green buttons to reach for the belt. When you have a grip, the button will turn blue. You can push them out of the ring. If you have a two-hand grip, you can sometimes lift them. You can escape from this grip by turning quickly.
4. Throw: Once you have a grip, you can turn quickly to the side opposite your grip. Once you are facing the same direction, you can step forward to throw them.
5. The forward and back buttons are on the left. The turn button is in the middle of the first-person view and it must be dragged left or right to turn.

There is a tournament room where you can compete in a tournament and get ranked from low Maegashira to Yokozuna. A tournament consists of 15 matches and you need to win 8 to be promoted. To get promoted to Ozeki, you need 33 wins in the last three matches. To get promoted to Yokozuna, you need to win two consecutive tournaments. When you finish a tournament, your rank will be posted on the leaderboards. There is one for overall high scores and one that is reset each month to provide a monthly tournament. In real world sumo, Yokozuna is an honorary rank and you cannot go down to ozeki (a Yokozuna can only retire). To simulate this, there is a Yokozuna leaderboard where the scores of tournaments by Yokozuna will be posted in terms of recency. To stay at the top of this leaderboard, you must regularly be in tournaments as a Yokozuna, otherwise your name will go down the list and that will be like retirement.

Also, in this room you can change the color of the sumo’s belt. Just click on the belt of either your own wrestler or your opponent, and select the color from the wheel. Then click the belt again to close the selector.

There is also a two-person room where you can play with others over wifi. Just connect to the same wifi. One player should press player 1 and the other player 2. Then both players press play and when they are both done, the sumo wrestlers will bow and the game will start. At the end, player 1 needs to press play to reset the game and then both players need to press play to start the bow.

Sumoscience attempts to mimic some of the difficulties in real sumo. The chest push is easy, but you need to keep your opponent in front of you. Slapdowns are more difficult, because you need to have enough room to move backwards without going out. Gripping the belt and pushing them out is relatively straight-forward, but can be difficult if they are doing the same thing to you. Throws are a powerful move, but they require the coordination of multiple movements. As in real sumo, moving forward and keeping your opponent in front of you are the basis of a good technique.