A Funny Old Game: Goofball Goals

Two players are crumpled on top of each other on the ground, struggling to get up. Another has fallen on their back and is alternately folding and stretching their limbs. Most of the rest of the team have crashed through a wall near the side of the pitch, covering the ball in rubble and rounded flesh. It's just another match day for Manchester United.

Sickburn! It's actually (or also...) Goofball Goals, a knockabout football game with comically inept, physics-animated players from the maker of tipsy-shoving fighting game Sumotori Dreams. There's a demo to download and a short video I took below.

This video is the computer playing itself, which most often causes them to send every player running after the ball at once. It's never not funny. This video from the creator of the game might give a better sense of how you might control the game yourself, however. You can either select individual players and use keyboard controls to steer them, or click and drag from the feet of people on your team to send them tottering in a particular direction. In either situation, they move with the momentum of a toddler, and are easily tipped over should any friend or foe or ball come in contact with them.

The demo limits matches to 60 seconds in length, but buying the full game let's you twiddle the settings, creating matches of any length, increasing the size of the ball, the size of the field, or even using a full editor to design your own pitches full of physics objects. It'a $6 from the developer if you're interested.

I can't account for its long-term appeal, but Tricky Truck and Sumotori Dreams are both lots of fun, and the latter regularly had me and an office full of people crowded round a computer screen laughing ourselves silly at the sight of two handsy, slapstick automotons trying to stand up.