If you loved playing Sensible Soccer on your 16-bit computer or console back in the early 1990s this news will probably warm the nostalgic gaming cockles of your heart. John Hare, the man behind Sensible World of Soccer (and Cannon Fodder) has started a Kickstarter campaign to fund development of Sociable Soccer on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Hare refers to Sociable Soccer as "the spiritual successor to Sensible Soccer". He wants to bring this "super quick, instantly playable, and finely tuned football game" to modern platforms. As we are now all internet connected, Sociable Soccer will offer online multiplayer with online teams playing in leagues. Even purists will agree that this addition won't dilute the traditional Sensible Soccer experience. With online play come the usual custom player avatars, to help you design your unique online identity.
Other new things include highly configurable controls and choices of camera angles. The original 'sensi' games were top down only, with your individual players being rather tiny and pretty indistinguishable. Sociable Soccer will add other viewpoints more familiar to players of FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer. Controller configurations can be set to be the same on other popular modern football games too. It's hard to imagine playing Sensible Soccer with more than a joystick and a single button though – despite those limitations the original could boast "quick passing, precise aftertouch and bone crunching slide tackles," as does the new game.
The development of the new game is expected to compete in December 2016. Between now and then the challenges facing Hare, and his development team of four others, are mainly to do with the online aspect. The Kickstarter page says that the gameplay and playability are "the easier part". Persuading modern players to embrace the speed and control above graphical realism will be more difficult, think the developers. For technical difficulty the online multiplayer will be the biggest hurdle, apparently.
As usual with Kickstarter, there are various funding levels providing various 'rewards'. The minimum level of backing you have to put forward to get a copy of the game once it is finished is £12. There is a Team Editor allowing you to change hairstyles and colours exclusive to Kickstarter backers. There are also pledge levels that provide; T-shirts, early access play, being included in a pre-set custom team, all the way up to a £5000 pledge for meeting up and spending some time with the development team in Finland (travel costs not included).
Currently the Sociable Soccer project has nearly 900 backers and has raised just £16,600 of its £300,000 goal with 29 days to go.
