New Star Games followers may have heard rumours about a new football game that I'm working on. So what is this new title that I hope to release before the worlds greatest players fly out to South Africa? It's only a flippin' World Cup themed, 2D, top-down, all new follow-up to the awesome Sensational Soccer, that's what! Yes, I'm going back to my roots with the sole aim of creating the best sprite-based football game ever made. Development has been very smooth so far with the match engine coming together at an alarming pace and is now approximately 80% complete. The main areas that still need work are the goalkeeping AI and the tournament system, but with 42 days until the show kicks off (and the tons of re-usable programming code from my previous footy games) I'm confident that it can be done. The game will be quite light in terms of features, but rest assured that there will be a full World Cup campaign mode, along with your basic 1 or 2 player quick matches. I'll hopefully have time to squeeze a tactics editor and a few other goodies in there before release, but the bite-sized nature of the game will be reflected in it's price (quite unlike the official FIFA World Cup game then!)

What I can tell you is that I have decided to simplify the controls and in a throw-back to those classics of the 8-bit era, all actions will be performed with just one button. Now before you panic let me just say that the new system falls somewhere between Sensible Soccer and Sensational Soccer, and you can pretty much do all that you could in my previous football games only with a layer of complexity removed. In my opinion it gives the game a refreshing, instant appeal (and will be especially welcomed by keyboard players I'm sure.) Screenshots will be appearing via my blog and Twitter, but here's a small one to whet your appetite...

http://twitpic.com/1jdxp5

Note that you can zoom the camera in or out to your preferred distance and that the new sprites look great up close! So that's what is taking up my every waking moment and it really does feel good to be making a 2D football game again.