Redesigning football? How Rematch reimagines the sport as utopian 'painterly and impressionistic' cartoon chaos

Arcade football game Rematch feels like its coming at just the right time. Given fan frustration – and logo grumbles – over EA FC (formerly known as FIFA), not just one of the biggest games but also the football game that all with a love for the beautiful game gravitate towards, the time feels ripe for alternatives.

Rematch feels like that contender, which rather than trying to simulate real world clubs and players, cares more about putting you on the pitch as a single football player. In other words it feels more like playing an actual team sport, or indeed a team-based online multiplayer games like Rocket League or Overwatch.

If you love retro games and retro games consoles, then you may remember Namco's LiberoGrande from 1997, which did something similar to Rematch. Likewise, arcade football is on-trend, read my interview on the comic book football game Despelote, made in Unreal Engine, for a comparison to Rematch.

Rematch is perfect arcade design

Going hand in hand with that is a vibrant aesthetic that also depicts a more utopian vision of not just the sport, but society as a whole. Speaking of its setting and philosophy, art director Sabrina Tobal says, "It's about humanity in 2065, it's about social justice, diversity, fair play, advanced technology and creative society."

She explains that at the beginning of conception, the key words she had from Rematch director Pierre Tarno was included "futuristic", "feel-good", "optimistic", as well as "movement" and "cooperation".

When showing the references on a mood board, this has also been translated into a painterly impressionistic aesthetic, not too dissimilar to developer Sloclap's previous game Sifu, but with even more vibrant colours.

As an example, Sabrina shows me a picture of steel cutlery, which in real life would be silver, and therefore rendered with white and grey, but which their artists instead change to other colours. "We want it elegant and sharp, with chromatic aberration and the colour scheme is bright," she adds.

Rematch is more than football

In contrast to the more dystopian state of the world today, Rematch imagines a future where technology is helping to make the world a better place while the natural beauty of the planet can be celebrated. That's something that is reflected in the stadiums themselves, designed with wind, solar and tidal energy in use.

"It's a challenge imagining in 2065, what does wind power look like?" Sabrina continues. "Each stadium is linked to one renewable energy and the challenge is to make it look futuristic, credible and also that it works as a stadium you can imagine, and at the same time where the renewable energy is also integrated into the design."

But it's not actually just limited to a stadium as teams actually play in an AR 'cage' (it's also why the ball does not go out of bounds so there are no throw-ins and corner kicks, and therefore no lost momentum during a match).

"In the future, when you're playing in these AR cages, if the game is happening in England, for example, people could come to a stadium in Paris and they would see the game through the cage as if they were also there, but for the players inside, they're a bit cut off but also more focused," Sabrina explains.

That tech also provides a good excuse to include environments outside of a traditional football game. Sabrina says, "It allows us to explore a variety of environments from everywhere on Earth, including space, underwater, in an iceberg, or a volcano!"

Seeing an example of the iceberg is particularly interesting, presumably because by 2065 in this utopian timeline, humanity has managed to prevent all of the ice from melting, but it also illustrates the game's colourful aesthetic.

"We try to find some mood and how we can integrate the iceberg texture in our game," says Sabrina, showing different icebergs that feel like they're refracting light that shows all the colours of the spectrum, rather than the more boring blue and white you might associate with them otherwise.

Winners set the scene in Rematch

The AR environments also have an effect on gameplay, as each team gets to pick their environment, and that will be displayed to everyone based on which team has just scored a goal.

It's a novel way to display who has the winning home team advantage. In addition to that are what Sabrina refers to as goal bursts, the firework-like effects for when a goal is scored, which also makes me think of what happens when you score in Rocket League.

"Rocket League is like an explosion from inside the goal, but we wanted to have something that was natural and spectacular, not too graphic, that was incorporated within the [AR environments]," she says, while showing some examples, such as a goal burst consisting of fish patterns underwater while foliage does a similar effect in the jungle environment.

These uplifting and colourful visuals, along with the diversity of the design of player faces and hairstyles (you're free to customise your own player's appearance so men, women or non-binary can play together in the same team), feels all the more important in fostering a positive virtual space, in counter to the toxicity that tends to be associated with online gaming.

With an open beta in April that attracted over 100,000 players on Steam, during a weekend where the concurrent players even beat the numbers of Rocket League and EA FC players combined, there's a strong sign that Rematch's utopian vision is going to be a reality.

Rematch releases for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox Game Pass on 19 June. Visit the Slocap website for more details.