Remember the classic Sensible World of Soccer or the original Sensible Soccer? Classics from the 90s and Ballsy! World Cup 2020 is a wonderful take on it. Note: key provided by the developer.

I have seriously fond memories of SWOS, playing endless hours on the Amiga a long time ago. Ballsy really does feel like it both mechanically and visually although naturally it's more modern and looks a lot cleaner. After originally releasing in October 2020, the developer decided to port it in December 2020 to Linux.

"Tired of these sluggish, scripted modern football games? Still like some physics momentum in your retro footy game? Search no longer! Ballsy! offers that fluent feel for flowing football fans. The European football, that is, so, not handegg. Though truth be told, the term 'soccer' was actually invented by the English, so it doesn't deserve all the hate it gets."

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A genuine surprise that it feels so great, if you've been after a simple pick up and play retro Football game, this is easily worth picking up. Play against AI, friends / family in local multiplayer and it also supports Steam Remote Play Together.

You can find Ballsy! World Cup 2020 on itch.io and Steam .

Megan Fox of Glass Bottom Games announced that SkateBIRD has a demo up again, to celebrate being included in the Tokyo Game Show 2020 and you can play until September 28.

SkateBIRD is a game that doesn't need much of an introduction. It's skateboarding, with birds. Funded on Kickstarter in July 2019 with thanks to 2,526 backers giving the team $67,220 it's not actually due to release until later in 2021, so this small slice gives a quick look at what to expect from it.

What's different to the original demo? According to Fox, quite a lot behind the scenes. It's the same map but they've given it all new skating physics, "We iterated on momentum, top speed, pushing behavior, and grind friction. It's also a new iteration of the camera. Goal was to address prior feedback and see how folks felt about it now." and they also improved the balancing behaviour and lots of other little things.

A very unique take on skateboarding of course, a little silly but adorable at the same time. There's even a button in the menu that gives you a new random bird with a different little outfit and it's a bit hilarious.

There's a few birds scattered around which give you little quests to do too. Otherwise, just skate around and enjoy sweet little birds doing tricks.

You can try the SkateBIRD demo on Steam . Live until September 28.

From the creator of Absolute Drift comes art of rally, a top-down racing game that heavy on style and it has great gameplay to back it up too.

Here's the thing: i don't drive. Not in real life and any attempt at doing so seriously in games always comes with massive amount of hilarious failure. I'm terrible at DiRT Rally, I'm equally as crap at the F1 series, back when GRID Autosport came to Linux a lot of my time was spent on my roof and…you get the idea. They're all actually a little brutal for people like me - which is why I've come to appreciate the calmer side of it all thanks to the magnificent art of rally .

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With thanks to the developer providing a key ahead of the release, I've been playing it and thoroughly enjoying the whole thing. From repeatedly trying to improve my times in the career mode and time trial, to just taking in a bit of scenery in the sandbox / open map exploration mode there's a lot to love about it. Something I'll be clear on though is that this is not an easy game, it's still quite challenging and the handling does take a while to get used to. It's definitely not a simple arcade game and you will need to learn when to carefully drift and when to pull hard on the handbrake.

In art of rally you get to power through a little bit of history in various year categories, although not exactly official because as a small indie developer Funselektor doesn't get to use all proper licenses but you still get to drive tons of cool looking cars that resemble plenty of the classics.

art of rally is a game that shows how games can be quite beautiful, without pushing ever closer towards realism. It's easy on the eyes, it's clearly not trying to go for the level of Codemasters titles graphically and yet it looks absolutely gorgeous and I'm constantly blown away by it. A fine example of how to do a lot with so little.

I can't tell you how much joy art of rally truly is. Not many games let you send a little MINI absolutely flying around a corner, right into a barrel roll and came out of it looking pretty damn spectacular. art of rally does though, and it lets you do some pretty wild things - totally on purpose of course.

The game is single-player, however, you still get to challenge the world and you friends thanks to everything having a leaderboard. You can see how you stack up against everyone else, or you can ignore it and just play it entirely for your own fun and pleasure. It even has daily and weekly challenges to really test you.

As fantastic as it is, and as wonderful as it feels, nothing will stop me from ending up like this directly in front of the finishing line. I've turned failing into a perfect art.

That was a perfect opportunity to use the great built-in photo mode. More games need this! There's so many moments across games I've wanted to capture from fun angles and having it frozen, so you can pan/tilt and whatever to get the best view is super fun. You don't just freeze-frame though, after finishing you can go back through a whole replay if you want to pick some fun moments from new angles.

With art of rally you get a racing experience that pulls away all the fluff, puts it back to the basics of you and the car wrapped up in a visually striking look that I can easily and quite happily recommend.

You can buy it for Linux from GOG and Steam .

Club Manager 2022 / Anstoss 2022 has now completed its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, and thanks to that the Linux PC version is confirmed after hitting a stretch goal during it.

"Club Manager 2022 is all about modern football, while retaining the popular gameplay of the management classic. It offers depth of play and realism, while focusing on the truly essential tasks of a manager. Your team - your club and your success."

3,888 backers pledged €246,496, with the goal for full Linux support being at €180,000 so they got far more than they needed to ensure good Linux support there. The extra exciting news is that while they didn't hit the 250K goal for online multiplayer, considering how close it was they've also confirmed they will be doing it to ensure it's as big as possible.

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It certainly will be nice to see a good Football management sim back on Linux, especially after Football Manager decided to stop supporting Linux after releasing a few times. Considering previous Club Manager games didn't get the best reviews, let's hope this new team make a better game. They've got the funding and the publisher, Kalypso Media, to help out, so fingers crossed.

See more info on the official site . It's also now listed on our dedicated crowdfunding page .

Reviving a classic from the days of the Amiga, Anstoss 2022 / Club Manager 2022 is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter with 5 days to go. Thankfully, it's hit the stretch-goal to properly support Linux.

2tainment GmbH, technically a publisher, had a project in-house for a while as a hobby that they decided to take forward to bring a classic football manager game back to modern platforms along with a little help from Kalypso Media who appear to hold the licensing for it.

"Club Manager 2022 will combine classic ‘impulse’ gameplay with modern football analysis, offering players a heat map and many other performance tracking tools. Alongside a manager talent tree and player editor, the game will also include multiplayer in the form of a ‘hotseat’ mode, where up to three friends can play together online."

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We held off on writing about it until now, as full Linux support (macOS too) was hidden behind a €180,000 stretch goal, which has now not only been hit but they're continuing to gain funding well passed that goal. Talking about why it was a stretch goal, they mentioned it's because of additional tools used on top of Unity that aren't directly compatible but they will properly deal with that now the goal has been met. Between the previous goal and this, that's €30,000 set for it. The last stretch goal is at €250,000 for online multiplayer.

It's worth noting that 2tainment published three previous Club Manager titles themselves, none of which got a good reception from users. Hopefully this time with more funding, them taking on the development themselves and Kalypso helping out might result in a better game.

You can see the Kickstarter here , official site here .