A proper football match, played top‑down.

Play together - solo, sofa or online.

LOWBLOCK is a top‑down eleven‑a‑side football game inspired by the PS2/Xbox 360 era - when passes mattered, tackles had weight, and a 1–0 win felt earned. It’s football with all the unpredictable bits left in: loose touches, threaded passes, mistimed slides, offsides, fouls, penalties, and goals you actually work for.

It’s not a kickabout. It’s not a tactics sim. It’s a full match of football, seen from above.

What's in the prototype

• Full eleven-a-side - two halves with a clock, half time and a scoreline that remembers who scored.
• Passing that matters - you pick short and long, through balls, lofted balls, crosses, headers.
• A keeper who plays properly - works, but needs improvement and variation.
• A referee - real decisions, currently invisible.
• Four teams - each with home and away kits; more will follow.
• Local multiplayer - no split screen; everyone picks a side and plays together or against each other.
• A match that feels earned - with goals, fouls, cards, offsides, penalties but no VAR.

What’s coming next

• Online multiplayer - the game already works online but I need to work out how to structure the online mode.
• Formations, tactics, squad management - pick your eleven, change shape, adjust roles.
• Tournaments, leagues, cups, saving squads - competitions in co-op and online.
• More teams - and possibly a full editor.
• Polish - animations, UI, presentation.

Controls

LOWBLOCK is controller‑only. That’s deliberate: the game ended up with more actions than a keyboard can carry easily (although I may revisit that decision later). 

The controls can be configured in-game but should be familiar left stick to move, face buttons for pass/shoot/slide left shoulder switch player, right trigger sprint.

For local play, plug in one pad per player.

Feedback

What I most want to know is how it feels: whether defending is tense, whether the keeper is too good or not good enough, and whether a goal feels earned. Balance in a game like this can't be worked out on my own — bots playing bots tells you almost nothing — so anything you notice is genuinely useful.

Credits

Made by Jim Rowe. The players are rendered from a 3D model driven by motion-capture animation, baked out to 2D sprite sheets — there's a devlog about how that works and why it was necessary. Sound is built from freesound_community recordings via Pixabay. The prototype's original pixel-art players came from Chaser's Gaming's football asset pack, which got this far enough along to be worth continuing.