"Chasing safe bets is a death sentence": Rematch devs had no desire to simply chase FIFA or Rocket League, but they spent years planning out their hit football game

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"It was not a question of 'oh, Sifu did very well – what are we doing next?"

Rematch
(Image credit: Sloclap)

Smash-hit football game Rematch was an unlikely follow-up to its developers' previous game, but the team knew it wanted to make it years ago.

Speaking to Edge, creative director Pierre Tarno said that "the decision to do Rematch happened way before Sifu was released." Sifu, for those not familiar with developer Sloclap's back catalogue, is a kung-fu action game with a unique aging system. It was a commercial success, racking up one million sales in its first month, but it was also an obvious follow-up to its predecessor, Absolver, which was a slightly more open-ended kung-fu game.

In spite of its different subject matter, however, the team knew Rematch would be its next game after Sifu a long time ago. "It was not a question of 'oh, Sifu did very well – what are we doing next," Tarno says. In fact, he explains that a small team was actually working on prototyping Rematch almost a year before Sifu's release.

Even if Rematch maintains a lot of the physicality that shaped Sloclap's previous games, it's still a dramatic shift in genre. For Tarno, however, that's as it should be – "chasing the safe bets is a death sentence," he says. "I think gamers are on the lookout for new, original experiences."

Forget FIFA, Rematch is the most authentic football game I've ever played – right down to the very worst bits about playing IRL.

Ali Jones
Ali Jones
Managing Editor, News

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.

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