This is a little guide on how to play PMPY well. Most of these techniques you should be able to figure out yourself given enough time, but if you want to dive right in (or bring someone else up to your competitive level) this is a good place to start.

The Basics:

Push Me Pull You is all about possession. If you read nothing else in this guide, remember this:

You almost always want to be on the inside, close to the ball, with your head doing the pushing. You want to avoid wrapping around the other team and trying to pull them with your body, because your body is weaker than your heads.

There are subtleties and exceptions to this rule, but that is probably the single best piece of advice you can learn as a new player.

A typical game of PMPY is simple enough. Once you have the ball, you want to get yourself in the best position to defend it, and fend off the opposing team. If you’re attacking, you want to subvert the other team’s hold on the ball, and either take it from them, or find a way to manipulate them into doing your work for you. Here’s how:

Controls:

Move with your control stick. Hold your Bumper/L1/R1 to shrink, and your Trigger/L2/R2 to grow. You can also click in your stick (L3 or R3) to make your character talk. This can be useful if you’re losing track of which character you are, or a good way to confirm which thumb is which controlling which head if you’re playing as both characters at once.

Length:

A key skill in PMPY is controlling your length - this is a resource you share with your partner, so communicating to them what you’re doing is important.

A lot of people assume at first glance “the shorter you are, the harder you can push”. This isn’t technically true - strength is actually based on how stretched you are - but being smaller does mean that your heads are generally nice and close to each other, doubling your pushing power, and enabling you to coordinate more easily. Being small is perfect for weaseling into the formation of the other team with a concentrated attack, but makes controlling the ball tricky once you’ve got a hold of it.

Being long is about control - you can use your slack to pull the ball along easily, wrap it up in a defensive position like the snail, and even manipulate the other team by blocking them off with your body.
However, being long when you don’t have the ball is generally not advisable. You’ll move more slowly with your body dragging behind you, and you’ll be more easily split apart, allowing the other team to stretch your body, making you lose your grip.

Zipping:

An essential maneuver. Let go of your control stick, and hold the shrink button. This is the most effective way to regroup if you get separated from your partner. Because you are not pushing in any direction, you have no grip and will ‘zip’ straight to your teammate.

Zipping is an effective counter to the poke, and the fastest way to move anywhere in PMPY. You can use this not only to avoid being stretched by the other team, but also to quickly change your hold on the ball if you’re defending it, getting away from your opponents, or leaving them pushing against thin air.

Playbook:

Stretched
The state in which a body has been stretched too high above its relaxed length, and it’s players start to lose their grip.

Bag
A hold where the team makes a horseshoe shape, and uses it to drag the ball around.

Locked bag
Where players fold the top of a bag closed, making it harder for the other team to get in.

Snail
A hold where a team wraps itself around the ball in a spiral shape. An effective way to keep control of the ball. The player on the outside of the snail should try and stop the other team from trying to weasel in.

Scroll
A sticky situation in which both teams are trying to wrap around the ball, and are spiraling around each other. Because you’re effectively at a stalemate, it’s important to know when to break out of the scroll, and when to keep pushing.

Weasel
This is where a player tries to sneak into a defensive position (usually a snail). When trying to weasel, it’s important to approach the snail from the correct direction (counter-clockwise for a clockwise snail, and vice versa). Once inside the snail, it’s often a good idea to puff up and break the snail from within.

Puff Up
Growing a large amount very quickly while inside an opponents hold in order to disrupt the hold and stretch their body.

Stick AKA Spear
When a player pushes the middle of the opposing team’s body, causing them to become stretched and lose their grip.

Cannonball
Where a team shrinks down small, and tries to push straight through the other team’s body. Uses the strength of a two-person stick to break through a defensive wall.

Carousel
When players using a snail grow and shrink to spin the snail around. The player on the inside of the snail should grow, and the player on the outside should shrink. This is an effective way to stop a weasel but leaves the snail vulnerable to being pushed from the outside.

Pivot
A technique whereby the team who has the ball in a bag will deliberately move in the opposite direction they want the ball to move, in order to swing the ball back around behind them, using the opposing team’s heads as a fulcrum.

Discover your own!

These are just some of the plays we’ve formalised amongst ourselves over the course of making the game. Your matches will evolve in the same way ours have, with strategies and counter-strategies emerging over time. We think there’s a lot of depth to uncover, so hopefully we’ll see you at EVO in a few years time??