As opposed to the way most football games work, in Rematch you only control a single player. With too little control over your moves that could be quite dull, and with too much control it could be overwhelming. How did you make sure you had the correct balance? That balance was one of our biggest design challenges. You control one athlete, but you feel the entire team’s rhythm. The key was to make every input meaningful, responsive, fluid, and grounded in credible motion. Our action-game background helped a lot here. Like in Sifu, there’s precision and timing, but in Rematch, it’s shared between players. You read the field, anticipate passes, and react to pressure. It’s less about controlling everything but being in sync and trusting your teammates.
Do you do any incentivising design wise to get people to work together as a team, rather than hogging the ball? It’s a challenge, because there is a natural tendency to try to keep the ball at first, and we certainly want to have viable dribbling options - sometimes, it’s important to take that risk. But it was clearly important to reward teamwork without forcing it. Making the player vulnerable with the ball was an important design concept; when you’re in possession, the safest option is often to pass to a teammate. That simple rule encourages quick passes, support runs, and collective rhythm. Making volley actions really satisfying is also a way to incentivise teamplay: volleys accelerate the tempo, putting the other team under pressure, and they’re a great way to pass the ball.
People can always become the goalkeeper on the fly, but the game does swap people in and out from time to time. What was the thought process behind that? Football is all about fluid positioning. We didn’t want fixed roles, we wanted organic transitions. In Rematch, anyone can step into goal by entering the box, and someone else naturally fills the open space. It keeps everyone involved and maintains momentum. The goalkeeper isn’t isolated; they’re part of the same rhythm. You defend, recover, attack, all as one continuous flow.
There was some early criticism of the way the skill-based matchmaking worked in Rematch, with some people convinced they were getting put into matches that weren’t fair. How have you altered the matchmaking parameters to address feedback from players?
In the first weeks of the game’s release, the matchmaking parameters were too loose, matching players with teams of different skills too fast. We’ve restricted them since - it’s preferable to have matchmaking take a little more time, but have games that are better balanced. We also improved our ranking system in October with Patch 5, to better match players’ ranks to their actual MMR (hidden rating variable computed from wins/losses), so ranks will have more meaning in the competitive experience. Importantly, skill evaluation and competitive ranking are complex subjects that we will keep improving over time.
How much does player feedback affect your design choices and perspective on Rematch in general? How often are you looking at it and implementing changes? Constantly. From the very first betas, player feedback has shaped the game. We are very attentive to what players say about the game, especially competitive tournament players. This doesn’t mean we’re changing all our priorities based on what people are saying on Reddit at this moment - and player feedback can go in very opposing directions! But when there is a consensus on technical or balancing issues, we try to act on it - sometimes it’s an immediate hotfix, sometimes it’s more complex work that can take a couple of months to be live - or more!
Rematch is a pay-to-play release, but it also includes battle passes and microtransactions. How do you demonstrate the value of a battle pass to players that have already bought your game? How do you set player expectations around monetisation? We believe Rematch offers players options. When you buy the base game, you already get a complete experience across content and gameplay, alongside a number of free unlocks too. Beyond that, we want to offer options for players to express themselves and engage on a deeper level if they choose to. The battle pass and cosmetic items are there for the players who see something they really like, be it a specific outfit or special collaboration, and want to support the game’s ongoing development in that way. None of these items affect gameplay, so it keeps things on a fair playing field for everyone.
It’s been a few months since Rematch launched, and a lot of other fantastic games have come out. Has player behaviour (or more, their relationship with Rematch) changed at all? Yes, and that’s been fascinating to watch. Very fast when the game launched, we saw teams developing real tactics, coordinated rotations, creative defenses, new ways to use the walls or pace the match... A competitive scene has developed quickly, with teams of highly skilled players, and tournaments all over the world. Currently, we’re focusing on improving the core gameplay to make it as fair and interesting as possible in a competitive setting.
How far ahead does the roadmap for Rematch go? We already have a full year mapped out: gameplay improvements, new competitive and social features, game modes and events. We have a lot of plans beyond that first year, but nothing is set in stone: it’s important to stay flexible and to be able to iterate based on player feedback.
What’s the next goal coming up for the team? Should we expect a version of the game for Nintendo Switch 2? Our immediate focus is on refining the core experience, to keep improving the fairness and depth of the game mechanics. So we haven’t started working on Switch 2 yet, but we’d love to bring Rematch to Switch 2 at some point - it’s a great platform!
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