Right, battle royale games have peaked. Devs: you can stop updating Fortnite and Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. Cancel your Mavericks and your rumoured Call of Duty modes. There's no real point now, because the browser-based Soccer Battle Royale has stolen the genre's crown for good.
It's a free, simple take on the formula where you've got to defend your goal against 99 AI opponents and an ungodly number of footballs.
Here's what that looks like.
SOCCER BATTLE ROYALE! - Ludum Dare 41 Submission Watch on YouTube
It reminds me of a fantastic game we occasionally got to play in P.E at my secondary school. In the gym, 8 or so teams would each turn a bench sideways and start kicking a football around. If you let the ball hit your bench you were replaced by a teammate, until each side ran out of subs and only one team remained. There was a joyous tension to it that I've only just realised mirrors the excitement of battle royale games, thanks to the magic of SBR.
And there is a bit of magic to SBR! I may have written that intro with my tongue boring a hole through my cheek, but the 15 minutes of frantic ball kicking I've spent so far have been a blast. The idea had me grinning from the outset, but I wasn't expecting to laugh out loud in nervous excitement as footballs sailed perilously close to my two posts. It's all brought together by the deliberately awkward tank controls, which I blame for the howler of an own goal that just concluded my session.
There are four difficulties, which I think determine how much the AI players target you. It's worth having a stab at impossible mode, just to see what it looks like when 99 footballers on a cavernous pitch all make a beeline for your goal.
Soccer Battle Royale was made for the Ludum Dare 41 game jam, and you can download it or just play it in your browser on Itch.
