Soccer Story's football RPG adventure will kick off on November 29th

Football has been banned and only one person can save it. No, it's not the self-important fantasy Cristiano Ronaldo dreams every night, it's the setup for adventure RPG Soccer Story. You need to travel around its colourful, Nintendo-inspired world, cajole people into kicking balls once more, and then defeat them on the pitch. Soccer Story also now has a release date: November 29th.

Here's a new explainer video:

I like football, but it looks as if Soccer Story is about football in the way Pokémon is about bug collecting. It's an inspiration, sure, but I doubt you're going to be struggling with the offside trap. Instead, there are several football-adjacent activities as you explore a Zelda-like world, and then when the soccer matches do happen, they're against pensioners, toddlers, ninjas and sharks.

As you rescue regions from their soccer-based ailments, you'll also have opportunities to level up your personal soccer stats, and ultimately you'll overthrow the nefarious organisation responsible for banning football, Soccer Inc. Or, I assume you will. Perhaps Soccer Inc will triumph and send you to play football in a country with a terrible human rights record instead.

Talk of football being banned due to an ambiguous "calamity" puts me in mind of the excellent, funny, expansive Barkley, Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden: Chapter 1 Of The Hoopz Barkley SaGa, and its sadly cancelled (and open sourced!) sequel The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 – Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie – Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa. Soccer Story is obviously a different kind of RPG, however.

Soccer Story will be available on November 29th via Game Pass but also on Steam.