Rematch blew away my expectations: trailers don't do Sloclap's 5v5 football game justice

Every now and then a game comes along that seems unassuming at first but totally blows away all of your expectations and reveals itself to be something special. Rematch is one of those games. Yes, it's football, but it's far closer to the likes of Rocket League and Overwatch than it is to FIFA and is all about action and teamplay.

Trailers really don't do this game justice (although you can watch the latest one above). Watching people run around a pitch, even when extremely stylish, can't capture just how good this feels to play. Rematch is the closest I've come to feeling like I'm actually playing a game of football.

Instead of playing as a whole team like in FIFA and other football games, you control just one player in a team of three to five people. You need to run and react to every pass and tackle, and really work hard to aim your shots and score a goal.

Even if you're not a fan of football, I'm confident that the fast-paced drama will win you over. Rematch is being made by Sloclap, creators of martial arts games Absolver and Sifu, and it shows in the sense of bodily control and opportunities for reaction.

"We want you to feel like an amazing athlete," creative director Pierre Tarno told PC Gamer at a recent studio visit in Paris. "We want players to feel the high stakes pressure of football. We were trying to get to that core essence of at least part of what makes football so much fun and a beautiful sport."

Put most simply by the developer: FIFA is a football simulation, while Rematch is a football player simulation.

Match maker

Rematch will launch later this summer with four modes—3v3, 4v4, 5v5, and a ranked 5v5 with other modes to be added in later seasons. Matches last about six minutes, but can spill into overtime and for now things are multiplayer only, with bots for solo play being worked towards for season 3 in 2026.

"For me, where the game strikes the best balance of action, engagement, and tactical gameplay is 5v5, and that's why I think it makes sense to have it as the main competitive game mode," Tarno said. "But new game modes, even fun ones, if they're popular enough and deep enough could find their way into competitive queues. We're very open to mixing things around."

I played a few rounds of 4v4 and 5v5—the pitch changing sizes slightly to create more heated games when there are fewer players. By my third match, I was hooked.

The simple act of connecting with the ball and making things happen feels amazing. Chasing it down after the opposing team fumbled a shot then passing it further upfield to line up a shot made me feel like a hero just as much as getting in a few cheeky goals.

As I got deeper into it, I started picking up more techniques like overhead passes and volleys. There's also a stamina bar that allows you to put on extra bursts of speed to really launch yourself into every charge and a short 'extra effort' opportunity to push yourself to the limit.

You can also swap playing positions on the fly during a match—goalkeepers aren't locked in and are encouraged to step out of the penalty box to become a part of offensive pushes. If things start to go a bit wrong anyone can step in to play keeper, too. It's down to whoever reaches the backend of the pitch first to take up the gloves.

You'll be randomly assigned a spot at the start of each game, but you never have to stick to it—if someone else prefers to play goal it's a very quick changeover and means that no one has to feel left behind or pressured into any position.

When in possession of the ball you're particularly vulnerable to having it stolen from you via tackles so you'll need to try to push it ahead of you and keep passing to keep up that frenetic tempo.

Bright future

The drawback of online play, however, and a side effect of all that pressure is that people's 'passion' for the game might bubble over in unsavoury ways.

Encouraging healthy teamplay is a design problem, says Tarno, and one hope is that the setting will encourage friendly behavior. Rematch takes place in an "optimistic future" that has embraced clean energy sources such as solar and wind farms, a "colorful and cheerful" world that's about "the joy of playing with friends."

The developer has also noticed that teamwork tends to emerge naturally, because whoever has the ball is in danger of having it taken from them.

"There's more of an advantage to defense than to offense," Tarno said. "So vulnerability in possession is something that spontaneously generates team play. When we ran load tests, we were playing games—solo queuing against randoms who didn't know each other—and they were passing the ball. It was one thing that really was a relief. Because I was a bit scared of every time somebody gets the ball, they try to be the hero and be the star of the show etc. But since it's a risk to dribble and the winning strategy is to construct an action and a team play."

And if all that fails there's always mute and block options and Sloclap will be monitoring griefing techniques—they've already made sure that the goalkeeper can't just catch and chuck a ball into their own goal to annoy their team.

Rematch will be out on June 19 for $30—it's got a Steam page here—and there are opportunities to play it in invite-only betas before then. If you're interested, you can sign up for a chance to participate on the official website. We'll also have more on Rematch in the next issue of PC Gamer magazine.