English E-Football

An Idiot’s Guide to Football Video Games 2: Ridiculous Roundup

Whoever says video games have to be serious probably didn’t have a very happy childhood.

If you’ve caught the first volume of An Idiot’s Guide to Football Video Games, and you found those games a bit too serious for your liking, you might be interested in some of the frivolous fun we’ve encountered on Steam. Here are some PC titles that take the beautiful game to some weirdly wonderful places.

FootLOL: Epic Fail League 

This being a list of ridiculous PC games with tenuous connections to the world’s most popular sport, we found it fitting to begin with a title that features animal stampedes, weapons of war, and UFOs mixed into a game that somewhat resembles football. Despite one player calling this entry “completely stupid” and “not really football” (in a positive review), people seem to genuinely enjoy the chaos. At the time of this writing, the overall tone of reviews for this entry stands at Very Positive after 675 reviews.

Soccer Battle Royale

Take the chaos and explosive potential of the previous title, completely turn the rules of the game inside out and you’ve got Soccer Battle Royale. Players occupy the role of both striker and goalie at the same time while attempting to score against 99 other players in a ring of goal posts that gets smaller as players get eliminated. This entry is another playfully pixelated reimagining of football that is best played among friends, and for some reason, it seems to be especially popular among Brazilian gamers. This budget buy is considered a Positive—albeit with only 14 reviews on Steam to go by.

Robot Soccer Challenge

Fans of the remote-controlled carnage in shows such as Robot Wars or Battle Bots might appreciate this departure from both football and mechanical combat. You can’t design your own remote-controlled mecha-cidal machines, but you can take control of some familiar looking wedge-style bots and have them push a football into a net. As the theme of this entry appeals to a very specific demographic, and without true online multiplayer capability, reviews on Steam stand at Mixed after a scant 29 reviews.

Supraball

Considering the previous entries in this list, Supraball is quite normal. It’s actually quite close to actual humans getting together to play a football match online—except that everyone uses a rocket launcher to grab the ball with their hands and shoot it into the goal. Despite these grievous departures from association football Law, the formula of Mega Man(s) playing football has turned out to be fun enough, and the accompanying visuals are indeed compelling enough, that this title is rated as Mostly Positive after 2,962 reviews.

Ball 3D: Racing Soccer & Sports Games

If you or a mini version of yourself ever wondered what a game of football would look like in the world of anthropomorphic talking vehicles that is Disney’s Cars, wonder no more for that fix can now come from this title. You could also race the cars, or swap out the cars for what we think are Roombas, and have these round objects play other games centred around other round objects such as basketball or ice hockey. This surprisingly mundane yet ridiculous take on football registers as Mostly Positive across 3,599 reviews on Steam.


Rocket League

If some of the previous titles seemed a tad bit cartoony for your taste, Rocket League just might be your kind of bag. Let’s check the ingredients: vehicular football, check; a gorgeous colour palette, check; Tron lighting, check; anime style, check. This entry hits so many points that it is likely our top pick—and if the 270,318 reviews or the rating of Very Positive are anything to go by, the world seems to agree.

Most Correct Football Simulator 

For those gamers who have casually explored some of the physics sandboxes available on Steam, this title will bring to mind the ragdoll fun of Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (or TABS). It’s even titled the same way, so you know it’s probably going to be more about the physics than the football. If you’ve lost some hours being entertained by simulated bodies flying through the air, this might be for you. Despite attaining a Mixed rating across 31 reviews, there does seem to be a crowd for this kind of game.

Footbrawl Playground

If the previous entry piqued your interest on concept but failed to follow through in your eyes, you might find this title to be a better marriage of TABS and football. Although, most players end up caring less about the football than about horsing around in a physics sandbox. You can run around and punch other players, bowl over ragdolls with explosive objects, throw them into obstacles, and then if you feel like it, even play a round of footbrawl. It’s still in Early Access, so expect some features to be not-quite-up-to-scratch yet. This entry has garnered a Mixed rating across 37 reviews.

Table Football Pro

There’s foosball, and then there’s the high-detail visual feast that is this title. Unless you’re a connoisseur of vintage foosball games, you’ve probably never seen a foosball table like the one in Table Football Pro, and even if you have, you surely haven’t seen it at this level of detail before. Strictly for enthusiasts, with a Mixed rating after a mere 21 reviews.

Worldly Cup

If you’re the kind of person who understands what GOG means and what emulators are used for, this retro reimagining of football is probably for you. The football is relatively intact, albeit rendered in 8-bit arcade style and three-dimensional splendour for your nostalgic enjoyment. This title is obscure enough that you’d probably never meet someone who has played it—we haven’t even found a Let’s Play video to accompany this entry. As it stands, it is regarded as Mixed after only 12 reviews.

Legendary Eleven

This would be another title for the retro-heads. The most normal of entries in this list takes players to four regional tournaments and the World Cup through the 70s and 90s, an era some fans would call the golden age of football—and a time when absolutely everyone wore those tiny shorts. Said by some to be “better than FIFA 20”, this title is rated as Mostly Positive after 57 reviews.

Ganbare! Super Strikers

For a game of football played in the style of a retro turn-based tactical RPG, with an engaging story about taking a small-town team to the Japanese national side, look no further than Ganbare! Super Strikers. This 32-bit, spokon-style offering is generally found to be Positive across the 33 reviews by anime-inclined football tacticians.

TableTop Soccer

If you like your turn-based tactical RPG with true online multiplayer capability and less retro flair, this entry will feed your need. For enthusiasts of Dungeons & Dragons or other dice-based games played with pencils and paper, the table-top setting will be a familiar comfort. Rated as Mostly Positive across 81 reviews.

Football Drama

If you enjoyed the grimdark storylines in This Is The Police and Disco Elysium, this unique blend of deck-building mechanics, karma-infused decision-making, and colourful football commentary would be an ideal addition to your quirky collection. To assume the role of a team manager in a dramatic narrative inspired by a deep pool of literature on the subject of football, you’ll have to roll the dice against the Mixed rating from 31 reviews.

Headmaster

This is for those of you with VR headsets, a dark sense of humour, an affinity for anything vaguely resembling football, and for those who enjoyed the puzzle-based escape room experience of Portal. The weird, gloomy, and yet, somehow amusing Headmaster will have you training your ball-handling skills in increasingly bizarre situations. Found to be generally Positive by 20 reviewers.

If these indie games either bored you or terrified you a little, you might want to return to Volume 1 of An Idiot’s Guide to Football Video Games, or suggest some titles for us to try out here.

Kevin Eichenberger would play Rocket League for the eye candy, Legendary Eleven for the nostalgia, and Football Drama for the grimdark, but thinks Headmaster might give him nightmares.

Omar Zin would definitely play Legendary Eleven just because it has a gorgeous graphic and Football Drama, for the drama obviously. Rocket League feels a little too non-football.