I was lucky enough to meet up with legendary developer & co-founder of Sensible Software, Jon “Jops” Hare in London recently. You may recognise this name as the person responsible for legendary games such as Cannon Fodder, Mega Lo Mania and the all time great, Sensible World of Soccer.

The pending early access release of Jon’s new game, Sociable Soccer is fast approaching. 12th of October 2017 to be precise and I managed to get an exclusive hands on preview of the game in development and WOW!

If you are expecting a Sensible Soccer clone, then think again, this is a completely different game, whilst it may be touted as the spiritual successor to SWOS, the only real similarity is that Jon is also the lead developer for this game; the game play mechanics, graphics, sound and overall experience is very different. Sure! It has the same addictive game play and desire to master the game like SWOS, but that’s about it.

Now don’t shoot the writer, but I firmly believe Sociable Soccer has come out and beaten SWOS with a proverbial boot in the backside.

I played about half a dozen games with Jon and whilst all I could muster is a draw out of all our games (Yes I lost the rest), which isn’t bad since I was playing the designer! I found that the more games I played the better I was becoming, the impressive roster of over a thousand teams in unheard of countries, the roars of the crowds and slick smooth movement of the HD graphical game play had me humming the theme tune “Goal Scoring Super Star hero” whilst I was on my flight back home to Oz.

I also had the rare opportunity to test its VR mode on a tablet. I was treated with an unusual experience. Picture sitting in a stadium at the very best viewpoint and then play god and control all the players on the pitch. It worked extremely well and whilst VR can be gimmicky, I can see myself playing a serious campaign in this mode.

Expect to see online multiplayer too, increasing the chances of a Sociable Soccer World cup online, as well as various of other modes including a unique card collecting option to build your ultimate team.

We here at Retro Domination are looking forward to having access to the full game; stay tuned for a complete review.

Sociable Soccer is set for an early access release on PC via Steam on October 12 and will also be set of release on XBOX, PS4, Android and IOS. Nintendo Switch is also on the cards.