Football Heroes League is Marvel Rivals and soccer combined

When Run Games set out to create their next sports game, the studio knew it wanted to capture the intensity that players feel while running around on the pitch. Fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled sports action that is rarely found in other sports games. The classic football—or soccer, as it's called in some places—gaming experience had evolved to include controlling all players on an 11-player team. 

Football Heroes League puts the camera directly on the field, right behind the player, for an intense mix of hero shooter mechanics and arcade sports gameplay. Each player only controls their designated baller. 

This is anything but normal football. "It's very much no holds barred," Run Games' Creative Director Michael Marzola said. "You can run into people, you can shoulder charge, elbow drop them, you can slide kick them. It's very much an NFL Blitz type of experience."

Football Heroes League aims to rekindle the fire that games like NFL Blitz and NBA Jam—two iconic arcade sports experiences—gave to sports fans. They emulated the energy found at the center of the sports their games are based on, even if they don't follow many of the rules that make American football and basketball tick. For example, there's very little stoppage of time in any given match of Football Heroes League. 

"It's all about keeping the pace," Marzola said. "Each match is four minutes long and basically nothing stops unless a goal is scored. There are no fouls, there are no challenges. It's just go, go, go until someone wins. If there is a tie, things go into sudden death."

This 3v3 and 2v2 multiplayer football game takes a page from hero shooters like Marvel Rivals, giving each of its individual ballers incredible powers and fantastical back stories that would only fit in a science fictional universe. It wouldn't be a stretch to call these players superheroes. 

"This is a utopian world—not dystopian—where these peoples are rock stars, celebrities, sex symbols even," Marzola said. "They are the cream of the crop. Football—or soccer if you call it that—is like the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll of this world."

Hero abilities are meant to make the football gameplay far deeper. Some characters can play on multiple levels of the field by using double jumps, jets, and even ice ramps to get more air, confuse opponents, and get the ball into the net. 

Just like any hero shooter out there, Football Heroes League has a colorful cast of characters with a variety of abilities, stats, move sets, and trade-offs. For instance, while a forward may excel in speed, they won't have an advantage while playing defense. 

Two standouts from the Football Heroes League announcement were a genius tech guru who can control drones to help her play and a genetically modified lion who has super strength, among other abilities. It's no mystery why he stands out in the reveal trailer. 

"A corporation basically tried to splice his DNA, and they ended up creating this monster," Marzola said. "But he escaped from the facility and lived his life like he wanted; he was happy. Now he's found himself in the middle of this sport."

The visual style of Football Heroes League is colorful and playful, inspired by other arcade games and hero shooters that make their characters look exceptionally emotive. 

"I know this sounds crazy, but a huge inspiration for us is Supercell," Marzola said of the Clash of Clans creator. "The way they do characterization, where they're very over-the-top. You can look at a character and get a sense [of] what that character is about with their facial expression. It's very cartoonish. It's what we're going for."
Football Heroes League was built by a small team of over 20 developers, with a significant part of development coming from for-hire contractors. It's launching in Early Access this spring and will receive updates regularly. 

"We'll get tighter and tighter with every update, but our time in Early Access is really about adding characters, adding costumes, new stadiums, and refinement to the core gameplay," Marzola said. "If you join us in Early Access, every week you log in there will be something new to check out. We want to make sure that the people who join us early on and help us shape the game will get rewarded with cool stuff."

Run Games doesn't know how long Football Heroes League will remain in Epic Games' Early Access program. The studio is aiming to meet a content goal rather than spend a certain amount of time shaping the game. 

Football Heroes League went through a number of iterations when the team began designing the hero sports game. At first, it was mainly a 22-player multiplayer game where every player controlled a different athlete on the pitch. That didn't work out, as the team realized there would be too much downtime for a handful of players when the ball wasn't on their side of the field. That's how the team decided to limit the action to smaller team sizes. 

"This is a 2v2 and 3v3 game, which means that having less players means that communication is a much more important factor," Marzola said. "It's absolutely necessary to succeed while working on a team."

Run Games hopes to evolve Football Heroes League beyond football. Marzola specifically mentioned that he'd love to see Football Heroes League include basketball and even Sepak Takraw, or what's commonly described as volleyball played with nothing but feet.

Football Heroes League is coming to the Epic Games Store in Early Access this spring.