Jon Hare’s Sociable Soccer, spiritual successor to Sensible Soccer, is on Kickstarter

1990s football gamers are celebrating the news that Jon Hare has announced that development has started on a new football game, Sociable Soccer. The project is seeking funding on Kickstarter with a target of £300,000.

It won’t be easy for the Finnish-based development team to create a game that plays as well as Amiga era classic Sensible World of Soccer, whose gameplay was close to perfection. Its pixel-perfect simplicity and eerie background music rounded off a complete package.

With Codemasters sitting on the Sensible Soccer license, and sadly doing nothing with it, Jon Hare has created this new IP over which he has full control and ownership. Not content to simply re-make Sensible Soccer to create something similar to the HD re-release on Xbox 360, Sociable Soccer one will be 3D and the players will have realistic proportions.

It will be playable from the top-down view older gamers like me get nostalgic about, yet also from the dynamic pitch-side camera of FIFA and PES. The controls will be similarly configurable.

Sociable Soccer will be released on PC, Xbox One & PS4 next year.

For an in-depth discussion about the game have a read of Eurogamer’s exclusive interview with Jon Hare.