Sloclap’sRematchis the most ambitious take on a football game we’ve seen in decades. I’ve extolled my experience playing the game in my full preview, but Rematch is more than its mechanics. A lot of effort has also been invested in the narrative, aesthetic, and environments of the game.
During my time at Sloclap’s offices in Paris, creative director Pierre Tarno spoke to me about the creative pillars of Rematch. The game emphasises feeling like an amazing player, creating competitive pressure and feeling like part of a team.
The final pillar I find especially important. If you’ve ever competed, you’ll know that winning something as an individual brings with it a lot of self-satisfaction, but winning as a team is an indescribable feeling. You’re feeding off one another’s energy, creating a cocktail of sweat and ecstasy. I felt all of this during my hands-on in Paris, even if the stakes were low.
Rematch is trying to channel the positive emotions associated with football. This isn’t about the profit-driven, big business that football has become, but rather the positivity and spirited competition the sport was founded on. This is reflected in Rematch’s setting and aesthetic.
Utopic Environments
Rematch is set in the near-future of 2060, in a world where the ecology is so devastated that the world’s superpowers finally agreed something had to be done. The planet shifted towards renewable energy and allowed nature to restore itself. It’s leaning towards utopia, but not everything is solved – a refreshing take on our collective fictional future, which tends to be dystopian and gloomy. It’s easier to add stakes to a story when society has collapsed, but Rematch, being a sports game, is ‘allowed’ to tell a more positive story.
With this in mind, several arenas in Rematch are themed around a form of renewable energy. You can see windmills in the background, or hydroelectric machinery. They’re not just plopped in there, either, great care has been taken to ensure the environments are believable. The art team is trying to convey that society has progressed, all within the background of a football stadium. It’s an ambitious undertaking and is especially appreciated given that Sloclap could have just made generic arenas. It displays a unified creative vision and a belief that you can still tell a story in an online sports simulator.
Sloclap’s art director Sabrina Tobal walked me through how the art progressed from concept to finished product. I could see how the art team perfected each arena’s design, highlighting each stadium’s theme without sacrificing visual clarity for players.
Even the game’s colour palettes are very intentionally chosen. Rematch is full of blues and oranges, bright colours that are more conducive to teamplay and a positive experience. The game is trying to evoke the joy of playing in front of tens of thousands of fans; a gritty, darker aesthetic wouldn’t be appropriate for the story Rematch is trying to tell or the emotions it’s trying to convey.
The progressive theme of Rematch carries over into the character design, which allows you to choose between male, female, and androgynous features. you may customise these characters, but everyone fits within an athletic mould; they are muscular and well-defined. You get the sense that gender, skin colour, and so on doesn’t matter; everyone is an elite athlete ready to work together to overcome the opposition.
Rematch is shipping with a few stadiums, but concept art exists for many more stadiums that aren’t going to be in the initial release.
The uniforms have interesting twists, too. You can customise your character, and although the kits are grounded in realism, you can add streetwear touches here and there. It reminds me of Galactik Football, a French animated series. Tarno assures me the plan is to keep cosmetics believable in the future, so don’t expect to be hoofing the ball up to Goku or a ninja turtle in the coming years.
Although I was certainly impressed with the mechanics and gameplay of Rematch, I was equally impressed by its artistic vision. Sloclap is telling a story with aesthetic, design and environments, rather than burdening the player with reams of dialogue and exposition. It’s exactly the kind of additional care that elevates a competitive multiplayer game like Rematch into something worth savouring, rather than playing a couple of times and tossing aside.
