Sensible Soccer and Sensible World of Soccer remain two of the world’s most revered football games, decades after their release. Now their creator Jon Hare is reviving them under a new name.
Hare has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise at least £300,000 to make Sociable Soccer, which he describes as “the spiritual successor to Sensible Soccer”. The game is slated to launch in late 2016 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
“Sociable Soccer will be crafted with the same meticulous attention to detail as the very finest Sensible Software titles, to deliver a peerless gameplay experience across all platforms,” claimed its Kickstarter pitch.
Hare is building a team including developers that have worked on projects including Max Payne, Alan Wake and The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land to make the new game, promising familiarly fast-paced action with an online multiplayer mode and clan-based leagues.
“Sociable Soccer Clans are teams of player avatars grouped together under team names such as ‘Death Metal Kids’, ‘Surfboarders United’ and ‘Cambridge Old Boys’ the control and progress of clan teams is shared by the players who are represented there by their player avatars.
The game will feature over 500 National, Club and Custom teams with over 10,000 researched player names. Team names, player names and kits used in game will be similar to the majority of popular titles on the market and fully editable.”
Hare said he was confident that Sociable Soccer can compete with the big-budget modern football games on consoles.
“Competing with FIFA and PES requires much more than just a remake, it needs a different take on football games altogether, blending the instant playability of yesteryear with the power of modern technology,” he said.
Kickstarter backers can pay at least £12 to secure a copy of the game, rising to £5,000 to fly to Finland to meet Sociable Soccer’s development team and “jump into an ice lake, eat reindeer, drink beer”.
