My hometown has a soccer team now. I live in the United States, so this is kind of a big deal. It's been a cool experience to have a local team, and has led to some really interesting experiences, such as watching the lovely yet bizarre spectacle of internationally ranked goalkeeper Roman Bürki stalwartly defending the honor of my brand new hot pink midwestern American soccer team. When I see him bravely fighting in goal, a bunch of howling fans at his back, in Missouri for some reason, I am faced with one thought that outranks all others: give that man a gun.
Turns out that I'm not the only person to have had that thought. FEAR FA 98, by Madrid-based developer Jacob Jazz and recently fully funded on Kickstarter is the beautiful game with a brutal twist. Instead of my sweet, debatably successful team of pink-clad Missourians, the players of FEAR FA are serial killers, "sectarians", and psychotic nurses, the stadiums are named things like "Semetary Hill" and "Chainsaws United," and if your team is struggling at halftime you can summon demons to help you out (Roman Bürki should be allowed to do that too). The stadiums are full of puzzles and traps, so you're playing not just against the opposing team but also against a hostile environment that keeps things interesting by constantly changing. Plus, if the referee makes a call you don't like you can kill him with a chainsaw. What's not to like?
Jazz's "horror arcade soccer simulator" is an unrepentant patchwork of ghoulish influences. He's "always been fascinated" by controversial or banned games that have become cult classics, and wants to pull the "rebellious, chaotic energy" of titles like Thrill Kill and Carmageddon into FEAR FA 98, as well as games like RedCard that pushed the boundaries of what was allowed in a sports game. The over-the-top violence and horror of games like Postal, Phantasmagoria, or Painkiller obviously feed into a game where part of the objective is to score goals with your enemies' heads. He's also a fan of Puppet Combo and the Haunted PS1 Collective, which has been "more of an aesthetic influence, but still essential to the vibe."
For gameplay, he cites Mario Strikers and FIFA Street; for the story mode, he references Resident Evil and Rule of Rose. Outside of games, he points to John Carpenter (and singles out Escape from New York), horror films like Martyrs and Jacob's Ladder, shows like Evangelion and Elfen Lied, and literature like Warhammer 40,000 and the dark gods of Lovecraft.
It's a motley crew of influences on a wildly adventurous game, careless of genre constraints and determined to carve out its own niche. Not that it's got a lot of a choice: survival horror soccer simulators aren't exactly tearing up the Steam charts, after all.
It's a great concept for multiple reasons. First, all sports would be better with heavy weaponry. Second, the big name sports games have historically tended to be their own thing, kept pretty separate from mainstream gamer fuel and certainly from indie circles. Perhaps it's a legacy of jock vs. nerd wars; maybe companies that are already making a lot of money don't see any need to market sports games to anyone other than sports people. But the continued separation has always been a bit strange.
However, there's been a boom in indie sports games in the past few years, with games like Football Drama, Pyre, or the upcoming Despelote borrowing the structure and cultural meaning of sports to experiment with different stories, genres, or mechanics. Jazz said he'd be "incredibly honored" to be considered part of that boom, and stressed how FEAR FA 98's genre-agnostic flexibility should actually serve to make it more accessible, not less: with a Resident Evil-style survival horror mode, FIFA Street-style matches, and a hybrid mode with puzzles and objectives, it's really got something for everyone.
This was part of his design philosophy from the beginning. Jazz's earlier games like Baobab's Mausoleum and Tamarindo's Freaking Dinner were narrative adventures that focused mostly on story, atmosphere, and puzzles, but he realized after a while that he wanted to try to bring his universe to a different audience.
"I was getting tired of seeing my friends or family—who aren’t really into videogames—not being able to enjoy my stories because they didn’t connect with the medium," he said. "So that’s when the idea hit me: what if I mixed my world with something nearly everyone loves to play? Football!" He's excited to see people that normally only enjoy sports games try something new, and hopefully realize that there's something fun for them to find in the horror genre too.
If you did a double-take at the mention of Jazz's "universe," don't worry, you're not alone. FEAR FA does not exist in a vacuum, and Jazz has been making games in his own little world for a while now, with Tamarindo's Freaking Dinner being the latest. They share a low-poly horror aesthetic and a darkly offbeat tone that seems to hit somewhere between Paratopic and Transmetropolitan, and they're set in an irreverent dystopian playground of Jazz's creation, which he's returning to for FEAR FA 98.
I made the dubious decision of asking him for a brief summary of the lore of this game and I think his response is worth printing in full.
In the very near future, our scientists, under the new world order (the secret project PANSPERMIA), develop what is called anisotropic matter, which allows us to explore the Sun. During one of the many trips to the Sun, humanity discovers a grotesque, highly complex ecosystem with an advanced artificial intelligence that has developed autonomously within its core, known as N.O.X. (Neural Overlord Xenon). This AI was not created by humanity. Its origin is unknown. This activates a defense mechanism in the Sun (a devastating event known as The Transmigration), which uses its light to attack all life on Earth, emotionally altering and cognitively reprogramming humans to wipe them out. Or rather, TO MAKE THEM KILL EACH OTHER, creating simulations of alternate realities. It is unknown if any humans have managed to escape solar control, though it’s possible… day after day, graffiti appear on the streets reading: DARK RESISTANCE.
That's great. I love that. I am so excited to figure out what the hell that has to do with soccer.
Jazz has his work cut out for him as he translates FEAR FA 98 from a lovely, chaotic elevator pitch into a playable soccer-murder simulator, but he's excited to share what he's got with the world. The first demo is available on Steam, and he has plans for early access sometime later in 2025. In the meantime, I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment in Jazz's bizarro low-poly sci-fi-horror universe and the chance to finally give my beleaguered goalkeeper the gun he deserves.
