PERFECT PITCH

Sifu’s developer moves the goalposts with Rematch

By Chris Donlan

F orget ‘football’. Forget ‘soccer’. At Sloclap, the beautiful game is often referred to as “the ten body problem”. It’s his own phrase, but Pierre Tarno, the studio’s co-founder and CEO, still laughs slightly sheepishly when he brings it up. “Without getting into silly theories,” he says, “that’s what our game emulates. It’s always the same, but it’s always different. The ball has a gravitational pull on all players, but the players also have gravitational pulls on each other.” And so? “And so it creates these really unpredictable situations.” A decisive nod. “It’s like chaos theory.”

After making Absolver and Sifu, two complex and unforgiving takes on martial arts and brawling, it’s perhaps not surprising that Paris-based studio Sloclap should see football this way, as an interplay of bodies and elemental forces. But at the same time it’s hard not to be surprised by this sharp turn for the developer.

Instead of another fighting game, here’s a cheery, pared-down version of five-a-side (and three-a-side) football, with matches that last just six minutes apiece – an online affair in the spirit of Rocket League. Instead of the tight urban knots of apartment complexes and nightclubs of Sifu, you’re placed within brightly lit pitches against animated AR backdrops. Instead of the strikes and feints of Absolver, there’s dribbling and ball control and an emphasis on teamwork.

But the focus may not have shifted as much as it initially appears. Like Sloclap’s other games, Rematch is kinetic and fast-paced and absolutely in love with connection. Its designers talk about football as a thing of bodies and motion and beauty, in which matches are like a war and war is like an ocean, a tidal force taking the action in one direction and then another. Even that ingenious name, Rematch, hints at the hot splinter of revenge that powered Sifu’s whirlwind battles.

Whether or not Rematch is the stark departure it seems for its developer, though, it’s clear even from a quick game that this is very much a departure for football. If you’re coming straight from FIFA, Rematch will swiftly rewire your brain, in the hopes that your hands and fingers will follow. For starters, rather than controlling a team of 11 players and moving with the ball, Sloclap drops you into the boots of a single player in a team of three or five, a player you’ll stick with for the entire match.

Accordingly, the camera has dropped down low from the bird’s-eye view that sports games inherited from TV coverage, to sit behind your footballer, in a perspective more familiar to players of thirdperson action games. And the realignments only continue. Passes – known here as ‘taps’ – don’t find their receiver automatically but must be carefully aimed with a stick; tackles must be timed, their power judged carefully. Just following the ball around the pitch in Rematch can be an engaging and demanding experience, before you’ve even thought about getting stuck in.

The tactical side of things feels just as fresh, with players switching between stances much as they did in Sloclap’s debut, Absolver. Squeeze the left trigger and your player’s body realigns into a defensive stance, so that they can suddenly strafe left and right. If that sounds like shooter language, then imagine how Rematch approaches attacking. Shooting involves lining up your target with the on-screen reticule as if aiming a gun, before you apply nuance – a curve to the left or right, above or below – with the stick. Elsewhere, a shoulder button allows you to trigger an ‘extra effort’ gauge and sprint for a quick spurt of speed. It’s almost that arcade classic, the dash move, and it requires judicious use.