FootLOL: Epic Fail League – The Beautiful Game Gets Ugly

FootLOL developed by HeroCraft Ltd. and Lionshade is a soccer game that adds explosions and all around mayhem to the pitch.

Admittedly, when I was first told about this game I was extremely skeptical. Having been a soccer fan my entire life, I love the game as it is and the tradition of two sides meeting on the pitch and showing who has more class is timeless. FIFA has a monopoly over my console gameplay so any other soccer game that would step in and invade its “turf” would have to impress.

Enter FootLOL

This game is absolutely fantastic. The player has matches around the world using the country of his/her choosing. What happens when you’ve beaten everybody? How about playing on the Moon and Saturn! At first glance, the game tries to portray a legitimate soccer match, but as soon as you play the first game it is completely different. The user does not control each player on the pitch but rather a set of “skills” that the team has. For instance, in order to score a goal you wouldn’t pass the ball and shoot, you would set up mines on the pitch and blow away the keeper in hopes of your team shooting the ball into the net. Don’t want to use mines? No problem. How about launching a cow stampede at your opponent in order to push the ball forward? Or setting up a forcefield-like soccer ball to keep the ball away from your own goal?

The game has multiple powerups that will take the player a long time to unlock and the difficulty level seems to be appropriate. As you continue throughout the game teams become faster and use more difficult skills in order to deter the player from scoring.

Another cool feature is the monetary aspect of each game played. There are different tasks that the player must compete in order to make more money for each game. The tasks may be easy like achieve a score of 2-0 (you can run up the score as much as you like after that) or have the other team lead 5-3 (but still manage to win the game in the time allotted). Its important that the devs added this extra feature to the matches because it wouldn’t make sense to keep it a traditional winner/loser style game.

Gaming Tips

The game itself reminds me of a classic for the Gamecube called Super Mario Strikers. It focused on getting powerups and using them at the correct point in the game in order to score. Needless to say, if FIFA hadn’t become such a great game, Strikers would have been my all time favourite soccer game.

FootLOL definitely hasn’t failed epically. It becomes a beacon of light for Steam Greenlight because the developers have found a way to incorporate sport into a seemingly endless pit of FPS or puzzle games. They have recreated the modern soccer game and have done an excellent job.

So please take the opportunity to give FootLOL an upvote on Steam, you will not be disappointed. Also, if you want to support the devs, the game has been released on Desura for the reasonable price of $9.99; fair considering the length of the game itself and the intrigue it creates for the player.

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