Turn-Based Ball-Kicking In Football Tactics Demo

Back in September 2014, I wrote my one good RPS post, feigning ignorance of football and describing FIFA 15 as real-time squad-based tactical ritualised combat. Oh, what japes! But look who's the fool now: it's you, you rotters. Football Tactics [official site] takes that real-time action onto a grid with team management and turn-based ballcombat.

Developers Creoteam have released a demo to support their Steam Greenlight campaign. On the balltlefield it's all pretty JRPG-ish, which proves me entirely correct.

The action goes down on a 10x7 grid (no, not hexes), where teams take it in turns to do football. Each turn gives you three actions, to run, pass, shoot, and all that with any of your players. Each player has four stats - accuracy, passing, defense, and control - that determine whether they successfully pull moves off. They have different abilities too, different kicks and whatnot.

It has a management side too, with team layouts, buying players, hiring assistants, training players up, and all that.

Football Tactics is an updated port of a mobile game released in 2013, which certainly shows (it's locked to a 4:3 aspect ratio, for starters), but that's no reason to write it off entirely. They've been working on and expanding it since the mobile version, and plan Steam Workshop support for custom championships and clubs.

Look, here's one full match between two teams that may or may not resemble famous teams but it's totally a coincidence if they do yep: