Foolish football: Behold The Kickmen coming Thursday
Sensible Soccer it is not
If football is the biggest sport in England, pretending that you don't know anything about football comes a close second. Dan Marshall, the creator of The Swindle and the bad half of Ben & Dan, is a fan of the second. His Behold the Kickmen [official site] is an arcade kick 'em up which gets football gloriously wrong, and it's launching this Thursday. It'll run you about three quid.
Behold the Kickmen is football based on what Dan Marshall's character 'Dan Marshall' imagines football to be. He's not really sure. He's seen it around and know it involves balls, kicking, shouting, and money, but doesn't quite know how it all comes together.
Here's a wee snippet from, Dan says, when he was "recording footage for the launch trailer and I 'lost' a goal and it made me feel like a Big Fool."
Behold the Kickmen will cost £2.79/$3.99 when it hits Steam on Thursday. That's a good price for a spot of foolishness.
The launch was almost scuppered. After today announcing a Thursday release, Marshall unannounced it within minutes because he didn't know how Steam works nowadays. As we say in football, that was a real own-run. Thankfully, the folks at Steam are more competent than Dan and the launch is back on. Looks like someone kicked for a bogey and ended up with a trick hat.
Disclosure: I know Dan a bit from games events, have definitely drank several pints he paid for (but probably fewer than I bought him), and have advised him on how it's impolite to unbutton one's shirt so low in public. But now he's a grown-up and and married and living in the countryside, likely expressing strong disapproval on topics from young people's fashion to how infrequently the council mow the verges by the war memorial.