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Sifu And Solving Developers Sloclap have announced Rematch, a 5v5 multiplayer soccer game set in the summer of 2025. If, like me, you love French developers’ previous martial arts sims, you might like this news. spoiling. Football? We already have it at home. It’s like martial arts, but only a few get to hit… Ball.
I’m not sure I can swallow my sorrows entirely, but in hindsight, Rematch looks like a fun and quietly disturbing game. It also touched me deeply as it was a new approach to sports culture that I had mixed feelings about.
The first thing you should know about Rematch is that it’s third-person and you only control one character at a time, including when you don’t have the ball. This directly differentiates the game from top-down FIFA and Pro Evos by giving control to the AI while jumping between players’ bodies.
When you are not holding the ball, you move around the field, position yourself to receive balls, mark opponents and communicate with your friends via voice chat or message wheel – in short, become part of a football team. Collaborating on individual excellence is Rematch’s ethos, as Sloclap co-founder Pierre Tarneau commented during his hands-on presentation: “It can be more satisfying to serve up the perfect assist than to score yourself.” I’ll let you brave center forwards be the judge of that claim.
It may not be a kung fu fighter, but Remach looks like the work of people who know kung fu. Despite the choice of body type, the players are all graceful athletes, dancing around the ball and doing moves like bicycle kicks that would put me in the hospital for good. The game breaks from the same stylistic line as Sifu, with graphic novel-esque character models that glow from within, but with believable scale and scale.
The controls – from Tarno’s theatrical hand gestures to what I can perceive on the webcam – are simple, with the same button used for different things in different situations. But there are some more unique mechanics for defenders, with balls automatically intercepted in certain situations, and goalkeepers who can pull and dive balls forward into a midfield role when needed.
SlowClap is particularly proud of hitting the ball before it lands in the game, as it increases speed and makes passing more fun, and we encourage you to “share the ball”, in Tarno’s youth-feeder phrase.
They’re also feeling pretty good about the game’s online functionality – single player, that I can see – which draws on everything they learned in the PvP-oriented Absolver. Rematch has dedicated servers where players can set up tournaments and adjust the rules, along with support for private games and custom lobbies. It’s a live service game, but in a structured way, the experience of ruling the war for our solar system from the so-called custom of destiny. Tarno continued that the rematch will borrow “the lexicon of real football seasons”, with new modes, environments and cosmetics coming over time.
You might be wondering when we dig into science fiction. Before we do, allow me to look at some of the core of my football experience, which I kind of hate, but feel like I don’t really understand. Football to me has historically been a game played by bullies. When I was a kid, I associated it with having enough macho looks on my face (I played field hockey instead, which – as I pointed out menacingly – I could walk around school with a big stick). As an adult, I associate it with adults who act like babies on the street. And at home: there is forgiveness Relevance He lost the match between England and domestic violence. As the “national sport” of the United Kingdom, football is inextricably linked to jingoism, and as a billion pound industry, it is prone to corruption and corruption. Morally corrupt partnerships Like billion pound industries trend.
If you’re thinking I’m being driven ignorant by Killjoy, I’m guilty. Although I think there are strong reasons for my confusion, I have never really understood football. One thing I don’t understand is how it fits into Britain’s pernicious class system. I’m “middle class at last”, Alice B (RPS in peace) once mercilessly summed up, but UK football has a strong working-class culture, and in hindsight, I think some of the carelessness of my teenage years was a simple lie. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see soccer as a source of community because it’s easier to understand and play. In particular, I’ve been thinking lately about how useful it is for marginalized people, including people with disabilities, who need a hand with their fitness.
With all that in mind, what I find most interesting about Rematch is that it’s directly related to the beautiful game as a social force, a way to bring people together and organize their world. He is trying to “remove” the best of the hobby, and if the success of the project continues to be seen, the project should be discussed.
Here’s where the sci-fi stuff comes in: Rematch is set in the near-future, a near-future that is more “sustainable and fair,” where renewable technologies are everywhere. The stadiums are animated holographic boxes identical in appearance. Rocket LeagueTheir dome plans scored the game, along with beautiful images of the world: windmills against clear skies, shimmering coral reefs, silver cities, and colorful sunsets that wouldn’t look out of place in Absolver. On a practical level, the wall-to-wall stadium format means the ball never goes out of play, making for quick games with few breaks.
It’s all very ‘hopepunk’, and risks being blasphemous and shallow, a post-historic paradise where all bad things have been politely erased. Nor is it intended as a complex social commentary: As Tarno puts it, when I ask him if the remake takes any stance on today’s football competition, he says, “We’re going to put that aside – we’re going to do our own thing.”
However, the optimism is not only superficial: it is felt at the vocal level. There are no fouls in Rimch, and therefore no referees, the implication being that people have outgrown that nonsense. There are also mixed gender groups. And for the time being, there is little trace of football as an industry: despite real-world licenses and eye-catching transfer fees, there are no stars to trade, even if SlowClap does not “fit in” with business partnerships on the road, aspects and values of this game.
“It’s not about how many fans or money you have,” continued Tarno. Everyone is important. And this translates to the mechanics of the game, because they are always rotating. It’s dynamic on the field, as the situation evolves, and so it’s not like there’s a star striker, or whatever.
“We don’t want to over-index on a player who scores a lot of goals, even in terms of goalscoring,” he said. “Because scoring is the result of the entire team effort behind you, and you are the last step in the chain of successful challenges.” The game’s title, Tarno said, takes away the idea of victory because it suggests you’ve already lost a match.
All this deserves another dollop of cynicism. You could argue that you don’t need to jump several decades ahead to Wakandan tomorrow to understand the social function of the friendly five-a-side. The premise of Holodeck Stadium is easy on the eyes, but rather solipsistic, perhaps a little dystopian—can the players break out of the box? Is the crowd more than wallpaper? But I think it’s important to think about soccer as a world-building site, a gateway to different futures, however shallow or bad the rematch might be. I’m excited to try it and see if it helps put some demons to rest. This is – Absolver monitoring whenever you are ready, Sloclap.
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