While multiplayer football game Rematch has been quite successful for developer Sloclap, creative director Pierre Tarno has acknowledged that fans of the studio may have been disappointed that its new title wasn’t closer to single-player martial arts game Sifu. In an interview with GamesRadar, Tarno spoke about how “some Sifu fans were disappointed when the game was revealed and we’re sorry to say that.”
Tarno also acknowledged that this may have come down to the marketing for Rematch being not quite up to snuff. Noting that the original reveal trailer for Rematch had the text “from the team behind Sifu”, he believes that fans of the martial arts game might have been mis-led into thinking that there was a new Sifu game on the way.
“I’m sorry about that misunderstanding because I think we should have probably, early on, let the Sifu community know that we were about to announce a title and that it would not be Sifu 2, and they shouldn’t be expecting it, just so they didn’t have this disappointment,” he said.
Tarno also noted that, while Sifu has a passionate fan base, Sloclap would have moved on from the title eventually. The studio, according to Tarno, “felt that we’d really provided and kind of given everything we had on Sifu,” taking into account the year and a half’s worth of post-launch content that was released for the game. Fundamentally, Tarno also admits that there might be an industry-wide problem where players expect a studio to make the same types of games repeatedly.
“We have a huge opportunity to pursue the creative projects that we are passionate about, and not many developers have that chance,” he said. “It’s really very rare as developers to be able to do that. And then I think players and also media realized that although it was not exactly the same, [the games are] both third-person action games. Both grounded, credible, still epic, with bodies and movement, it’s physicality. There is a lineage between the titles, from Absolver to Sifu to Rematch, and our experience making the two previous games is what allowed us to make this one.”
Rematch was released back in June and was very quickly able to get more than million unique players. The title puts players in the shoes of a single footballer. Players must then work as part of a team of 3, 4, or 5 players to take on an opposing team. The game has drawn quite a few comparisons with another multiplayer sports-adjacent title—Rocket League. Tarno, however, has noted in the past that the studio wanted to create fresh take on the genre with Rematch, separate from Rocket League and EA’s FIFA/EA Sports FC series.
“These games are different giants in all these fields, and they do what they do super well,” said Tarno. “And so I think we just want to do something different.”
Rematch is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details about the title, check out our review.