Rather than kicking heads like in Sifu, Sloclap’s new game, Rematch, has you striking the soccer ball in equally exhilarating ways. From rainbow flicks to bicycle kicks, skill moves are central as you express yourself on the pitch. It translates the studio’s high-octane combat to a sporting experience that’s already turning heads.
When the independent Parisian team Sloclap formed a decade ago, no one could have predicted their trajectory. Absolver kicked things off in 2017, melding punishing melee combat with an RPG-style gear system. Five years later came Sifu, the unforgiving martial arts brawler that proved so popular it not only has John Wick’s creator onboard for a film, but even got a spotlight in Amazon’s Secret Level.
Over three million copies sold later, many developers would have made a sequel, but there’s no Sifu 2, at least not yet. Instead, the French devs have opted for something entirely new. A soccer game that throws back to the arcadey era of titles like Mario Strikers, where fun is at the forefront.
With the fast-approaching June 19 release, we spoke to the game’s Creative Director, Pierre Tarno, who told us more about Rematch, before explaining why Sloclap didn’t want to play it safe following Sifu.
What is Rematch?
Rematch puts you in the shoes of a single player in a game that so many amateur soccer players love to play with their mates – 5-a-side. Far more enjoyable than trudging around a muddy pitch on a Sunday morning, barely touching the ball, 5-on-5 soccer enables you to get the ball from the keeper and have a crack from the halfway line. It’s this sense of fun and camaraderie that Tarno and the team want to bring to life as you play.
“Rematch is really about the joy of playing football together,” he told us. “Seeing players team up, celebrate great plays, or just share a laugh on the pitch — that’s what we find the most rewarding.”
Tarno says that “precise and reactive gameplay” has been the top priority on the dev team, and certainly Sloclap’s expertise with frame-by-frame game design means that every input and action is reflected with minimal delay. This allows for a casual-friendly experience that also has a high skill ceiling. A bit like real 5-a-side.
You could pass the controller to a friend with little gaming experience, and they’d still be able to pick it right up. Meanwhile, experts with dozens of hours can still be learning new tricks and mastering their technique. Much like in Rocket League, players of all levels can take something from it.
“Rematch was built to be a casual, social experience,” says the creative director. “Easy to pick up and enjoy with friends, but there’s definitely enough depth for players looking for more of a challenge. The mechanical skill ceiling may not be as high as in Rocket League, for instance, but at high-level play, with players who can execute perfectly, it really becomes about mind games and tactics – kind of similar to what is experienced in fighting games.”
Squad goals
Given that you play as a single player on a five-person team, Sloclap had to ensure that everyone gets plenty of touches on the ball. This is easier in small-sided games than on a full-size pitch, but it’s still important that players don’t hog.
“One of the biggest challenges was to incentivize team play,” admitted Tarno. We don’t want players to keep the ball to themselves, but to quickly share it with their teammates. One way to solve this is to give advantages to defense, and make players vulnerable with the ball. From what we saw during the beta, it seems to be working – players are really cooperating with each other!”
Thanks to an early Beta, we’ve already seen Rematch strike a chord in the gaming community with over 130,000 concurrent players taking part as demand continued to soar.
That skill ceiling is definitely a large part of the appeal that’s drawing players back in for one more game over and over. While it’s easy enough to pick up and have a bit of fun with, it may take weeks to truly master a certain skill or set play with your squad. I myself put a dozen hours into the Beta and barely scratched the surface compared to what I was seeing in viral clips across social media.
Creating exciting new experiences is clearly what drives Tarno and his team and Sloclap. It may have been easier to keep 3 million Sifu fans happy with a sequel, but as Tarno explained, the team simply doesn’t want to stay put on any one idea for all too long.
“As an independent studio, we have the chance to choose what games we want to make, and we want to make the most of it by trying out new ideas – even if it means taking creative risks or tackling tougher design challenges along the way. And while Rematch is obviously different from Sifu and Absolver, which focused on martial arts combat, like these two games Rematch is a challenging third-person action game, with precise and reactive gameplay — so it’s not a total pivot either.”
For those wondering, that doesn’t mean we’ll never see Sifu 2. When asked about the possibility of a sequel, Tarno said: “We felt it was time for a change. That said, we do have ideas, and we’ve learned never to say never – so who knows?”
Here for the long haul
However, for now, Sloclap has more than enough going on with Rematch, including plans for the future. While they admitted that a Rocket League style professional esport will depend on what the community wants, “they’re ready to “provide tools that allow players to organize competitions.”
It will include a “full spectator mode, and further down the line [players can expect] tournaments directly in the game.”
There are more plans beyond tournaments, too. “We hope that the game’s reception will allow us to support the game in the long run. We have plenty of cool ideas for new game modes, competitive features, as well as player customization, stadiums, and AR environments. We’ll share more information on our first year roadmap very soon.”
Rematch launches on June 19 across PC (Steam), Xbox Series X | S, and the PlayStation 5. Before then, Sloclap is hosting a second Closed Beta period, running from May 28 through May 30 across all platforms.
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