A Bad Game of Football
The ritual is complete!
The most occult and evil time of year is finally upon us, what better time to launch Soccer with Satan than right now? 'Cause that's what we're doin'! So, if you are a very specific type of person, one who wishes for a demonic soccer RTS to play with your friends during this spooky holiday then you have come to the right place.
Soccer with Satan has been a long journey, and though we recognize that the game is, well... kinda weird, has some bugs still (just reframe them as fun little features in your mind while you play) and might not be for everyone, we still think there must be someone out there who finds this interesting enough to give it a try.
So, with that truly ringing endorsement, hope everyone has fun playing Soccer with Satan with your friends this most spooky time of year!
Yours spookily
Christer and Alex
Studio Gauntlet
Soccer With Satan cometh (sooneth)!
The entity that caused this disruption cast a spell of silence on us and our reasons for postponing the release cannot be uttered by us, lest we be dragged over the coals (legally speaking (figuratively speaking)).
Anywas:
Prepare for the spookiest and most occult, though only second most evil soccer game to launch this fall.
It's RTS, it's soccer, it's blood and gore like you've probably seen before, just not on the football field. Get out there and kill your way to victory!
It has been a long journey and we are eager to finally ship 1.0 just in time for Halloween!
Thank you for reading
Evil and occult greetings
Christer
Soccer With Satan Update 1.0.2
New things:
- Headless coach trainer
- Randomized trainer option
- Achievements
- Credits
- Visual feedback on attacks
- Bugfixes
Known issues:
- On rare occations minions jump around the scene due to network issues
- On very rare occations, minions get negative health due to network issues, and become immortal. This is a cursed bug that I have tried fixing four separate times, but that still comes back. It is a part of the game now. I am not happy about but, but I am at peace with it. Namaste.
Presenting: Soccer With Satan
So why did we change it?
For a long time, the title “A Bad Game Of Football” has not sat right with us. The old title did not describe the gameplay very well, nor did it in any way refer to the fact that the game is set in Hell. It felt imprecise, clumsy to use in conversations, and also the vibe of it too jokey - as if we were trying too hard to be funny.
The old title actually made us feel a bit embarrassed talking about our own game. And you don’t want that when you spent two years making something and should be its main advocate.
The title should reinforce your game. A.B.G.O.F. did not.
Time for change
We have played around with ideas for new names for some time, but we had yet to experience the magical feelong of “That’s it!!!”
I mean, Hellball, Goreball, FOBA - Football Online Battle Arena, Ball of Duty - Better, maybe, but not magical - Not good enough to warrant a full name change process and all that it entails in terms of in-game implementation, back-end stuff and yada yada yada.
But as we started to see the light in the end of the development tunnel, the idea of spending time on a name change felt more feasible - and still embarrassed about the old name, it would be really nice to find a name that we could stand proudly behind.
Then, one day, three short words appeared in the clouds on the horizon.
Soccer With Satan
This is the one. We both feel it. Playful, succinct and easy to communicate. The ‘T’ in Satan even spells an upside down cross!
Is this (un)divine intervention?
Whatever it is, we think Soccer With Satan is easier to say, it is more descriptive, and the associations we get from this title is more in line with what the game is actually about - unserious soccer, played violently. We hope you agree, and find this new name more appealing.
So yeah, there you have it. Our casual Soccer + RTS experiment is near complete, and we can honestly say that we are proud to present: Soccer With Satan!
Soccer With Satan is set to release on October 1st this year.
Occult regards
Alex
Release date set!
That's October 1st, everyone, October 1st!
The final version of the game will sport 3 arenas, 5 trainers (+1 randomize option), and as always - fast paced RTS-like PvP action.
We look forward to release day, the day the world will see that real time micro management with a mouse and keyboard is the future of sports gaming. We hope players will appreciate our little innovation - whether they be sports fans or not.
Expect more updates leading up to the release!
See you soon!
Occult regards
Alex
To Hell with Linux!
Linux Platform Support
Linux users can go to Hell, finally!
That's right, A Bad Game of Football now runs on Linux. If you or a friend want to try it out, buy it during the Steam Sports Fest for a 40 % discount (or read till the end to learn how you can get a couple of free beta keys for you and/or a friend).
The game supports cross-play between Linux and Windows users. That means Quick Play (matchmaking) will match Windows and Linux users alike, and also that you can challenge those friends of yours who only use Linux/Windows
Known issues
- Cursor bug - The in-game cursor is buggy on Linux. Therefore the OS cursor remains visible after booting the game. Press "C" any time to toggle OS cursor visibility.
- Still not playable on Mac
Disclaimer/Confession:
I'll admit it. I'm not a Linux user myself. In order to test that the game worked properly on Linux, I installed Ubuntu on an old laptop of mine, and that worked surprisingly well (except for some pretty nasty graphical bugs that probably has more to do with the fact that the GPU in the test laptop is toast (see a screenshot of the bug below).
Behind the scenes image of a graphical bug while testing on laptop with broken GPU
Aaanyhow, what I'm trying to say is: The Linux version is not rigorously tested yet. For that, I need you, real people, in the real world, to test it, and report any bugs should you find them.
I pray that any Linux related issues will be reported in our Discord.
If you've read all the way down here, and would like to test the game on Linux before you buy it, I have a few beta keys available that I can hand out. DM me on Discord (joelspeanuts).
See ya!
XOXO666O
Alex
Sports Fest Update - Changelog
New stuff
- Stamina completely regenerates for the team that scores a goal (Thank you Oliver @Riddlebit for the suggestion)
- New logo. It's burning now. It's awesome.
Changed stuff
- Grass is not green it hell. It's blue
- Hooligan Hollow has become less cemetery-y, and more halloweeny
- Explosion visuals
- VFX on headbutt and sliding tackle
- VFX on goal scored and annihilation
- More force on most explosions
- Minor UI tweaks.
Fixes
- No more empty crates on battlefield
- CPU training team is a little less "Let's all do the exact same thing"-y
Known issues
- Minion positions - sometimes before a new kick-off, they reset to the wrong place
- Loading fails - sometimes when loading the gameplay scene, one of the player's minions will not spawn and the player immediately lose by elimination
- Goal effect bug - Sometimes the goal lightning effect does not appear
- Negative Health - Sometimes a minion will get negative health,
- Landmine network lag - When kicking the mine while moving towards it, minions tend to walk straight into the mine before the mine has started moving, causing it to explode, even though you successfully kicked it.
- Artwork does not reflect the visual changes done to the stadiums
If you notice any other strange behaviours, please report them on our discoooord!
0.2.10 - Judgement Day
NEW CONTENT
- New arena - The Battlefield
Inspired by a world war that shall remain un-enumerated. The Battlefield features airdrops containing Energy Potions, HP-kits and landmines - New arena - Holigan Hollow
Inspired by Plants vs Zombies and the local cemetery. Is that weird? Anyways, Hooligan Hollow features coffins that rise from the ground and spawn zombies if disturbed. Zombies will follow and attack nearby minions - Hell Stadium now has a bit more stadium-like vibe
- Minions now have hair and more equipment
MAJOR CHANGES
- One button chargeable kick. We combined the two kick buttons into one. Hold the kick button to charge up a kick that goes longer and higher. To avoid running around with a constant charged kick, selected minions walk slower while charging. This also makes it easier to perform precision kicks.
- Shape of the playing field. We've cut away some dead space around the corners of the arena, and angled them so that the ball more often ends up in places affording interesting gameplay.
- Wall bounce. The ball bounces off the wall with a bit more force than it entered with.
- Ball drag. As long as the ball is kicked around, it moves fast and nimble. If the ball is not not kicked for a while, it wil increase it s drag and come to a halt, making it easier to catch up with.
- Respawning logic. After a minion is eliminated, the minon slot enters a cooldown period. As soon as the cooldown is finished, you ar able to buy back the minion instantly.
- Final Goal. When the time runs out, the game will continue until a final goal is scored. If that final goal makes the game tied, the game continues to a final round.
- Armageddon. If a player has a >2 goal lead when the timer runs out, their goal is closed during the final goal phase. This forces the player with fewer goals to go for the only way they can win: Annihilating the opponent team
- Hit-stop. To give attacks and interactions more oomph, we added a hit-stop effect, freezing minions and objects for a short time while interacting. This feature is not stress tested in a real world network setting. Please post error reports in our Discord.
BALANCING AND MINOR CHANGES
- Base move speed increased by 25 %.
- Vlad's run like hell ability has been replaced by a jump ability.
- Camera shake on all kicks and explosions.
- Camera focus on goal scores and final kill - still a work in progress
- Changed the names of 'Satan Lord of Darkness' and 'The Dictator 2.0' to 'Lucifer Lord of Darkness' and 'The Rebooted War Machine'.
- Loading screens with gameplay tips between menu and gameplay scene - Still a work in progress.
- Updated menu UI and styling
- Updated In Game UI and styling
- Level selection is now on a separate screen, following trainer selection.
- Updated flame visuals
- Updated explosion visuals
- Training mode now uses same trainer selection interface as online play modes.
- Added imps to the main menu that can be clicked in order to play dialogue. Still a work in progress.
- Quick Play now attempts to match players of similar rank. This can cause quick play to become slow play, if there is only players with high rank differences around (expect 5 seconds of search time per difference in rank)
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a bug where minions would sometimes get negative health and become invincible.
- ++
KNOWN ISSUES
- Artillery projectiles can get stuck on top of non-minion objects.
- Sometimes air drops on the battlefield are empty
- The Connection menu window does not show a Quick Play search animation while searching for mathces.
- When failing to connect/losing connection to a lobby and then trying to reconnect, or when playing over an extremely bad network conenction, bad stuff tend to happen. Please post reports in our Discord, and restart the game.
Not dead yet - Status update
During this time, we have died (downsized our team drastically), gone to hell (moved to a new office space), and been reborn (reworked the base gameplay and committed to it)!
Having finally landed the fundamentals of the game feels really nice. Before, we were trying to piggy-back off current events, trying to make our game appear super nice, but without a super nice game as a foundation, it felt like cheap tricks to trick people into buying an unfinished game. Halloween updates and and Qatar 2022-themed trainers sounds fun and all, but in the end it felt like we sprinkled candy on top of a cake shaped poop, not a real cake.
Sorry for trying to make you eat poop.
Regarding the game:
Yesterday we tried playing it for the first time in many weeks, and to our relief: It was hysterical!!!
The game is now a proper cake :D It was a confidence boost I sorely needed, and it inspired me to break the silence and write this update! We have worked on the game's underlying systems for so long, we had almost lost sight of why we were doing anything. Playing the game reassured us that our ridiculously violent arcade football RTS deserves to exist, and that it contributes with something new and fresh in the realm of gaming.
And to all you early accessors out there, expect an update late next week featuring revamped level designs, new ball behaviour, zombies, air-drops and other delicious work-in-progress stuff.
Stay tuned for more updates about the development and the soon to be announced date for the full release.
Thank you for your patience <3
See you in hell.
-Alex
Image description: Christer (left) and Alex (right) sitting in front of their desks in the current Studio Gauntlet office. They are clearly working really hard, and really good.
Happy holidays 2022 - Status update
So what is going on right now:
We were well on our way towards a Christmas Update but have decided to take a step back and focus on making the gameplay even tighter, making the current content even more awesome and generally just making BGoF the best 2-player football brawler possible. Not being able to push new content is always a bummer but we feel that in the long run this is the right decision for the game.
Okay, what's planned for next year:
There will be a series of gameplay revamps and tweaks, we hope you bear with us as we focus the first updates on just tightening the core experience. The reward afterwards will be a series of content updates featuring awesome new maps, each with a unique mechanic and new trainers with a set of sick new moves.
Great, anything else?
Expect a final launch date to be announced as soon as winter break is over! We are determined to get the game out of Early Access next year and we are currently ironing out the details of the final stages of development. A roadmap will be provided as soon as we have nailed down everything.
Happy holidays once again from everyone here and see you all next year
Sincerely
The Studio Gauntlet team