Review by Jon Donnis
Although this game looks pretty polished, it is still in early access, and it has a long way to go before it is anywhere near ready for full release.
There aren't many indie football games that have done well, in fact I can't think of a single one off the top of my head. That doesn't mean it is impossible, it just means that in a world that is dominated by the FIFA franchise, and with PES a distance second, to even stand a chance you game has to be very good.
Serious Fun Football tries an interesting approach, games are played in a 3 vs 3 environment. With fences surrounding the pitch, there are no corners, throw ins or even penalties. The game is purely about passing and scoring.
As this game is Early Access, some of the modes are not available, and bizarrely you cannot even play as your whole team, you can only control one player at the moment. This is not all bad, but to expect someone to come to the game and have this as the only available option, you are risking alienating your players before you even begin. Obviously as the game develops and is updated these options become available, but disappointed to see this from the get go.
The characters all have detailed attributes which will help them seem unique on the pitch. Some players can shoot better, others are better passes, and some can run faster, pretty standard stuff.
As you play through the game you will earn in game currency that can be used to unlock new stadiums, upgrade your player and so on.
There are three separate viewpoints you can play with, horizontal view, which is your more classic viewpoint, a horizontal one and
I am not going to talk too much more about the game, most of you know how a football game works. I want to concentrate purely on how the game is coming along.
The Good
The game looks great, the graphics are good, the pitch and stadiums all look very nice. No complaints there at all.
There looks to be a lot to come with teams, attributes of players, career mode, and so on, everything you would expect in such a game.
The Bad
The game plays very slow, the characters move very slow, I even put the graphics on the lowest mode to see if that was slowing things down, but nope, that is how it plays. This is a huge mistake. Arcade style footy games need to be fast and fun, and in this game, it is neither. Maybe less time spent on making things look pretty and more time spent on speeding up the game play, and making everything just play better.
The lack of ability to play as an entire team from the start is a huge mistake, a massive mistake, a monumental mistake, and one that the game makers should instantly work to fix, everything else put to the side. Let people play as the whole team, and speed up the play.
Overall
The game is early access so you can forgive a lot of the problems. It is being funded by private money, and is a truly indie project, but you really need to get the basics right. The game has been in development for 6 years and at some point, you have to ask why the basics aren't better. Forget the graphics, forget the fancy menus and stadiums. Get the basics right, get the gameplay right and everything else can be fixed later.
No score for now. And this game does have a lot of potential, a simple FIFA like 3 v 3 Footy game can work, but it has to be fun and it has to have quick gameplay.
Check out the game on Steam.
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