Pixel Cup Soccer 17 keeps the part of football that makes people shout at a screen and quietly drops the rest. Two teams, a ball, and a shot button that rewards nerve over mashing. BATOVI Games built it to be understood in about a minute and argued over for a great deal longer than that.
One Minute to Learn, Much Longer to Master
The controls are deliberately small: move, pass, shoot. What sits underneath them is not. Holding the shot button charges the strike and lets you aim it while the power builds, so the difference between a goal and a ball into row Z is a decision you make in about half a second. Lobs lift over a keeper who has come too far off his line, a dash buys the yard of space you need to get the shot away, and corner kicks and throw-ins are placed by hand rather than handed to the computer.
Seven Competitions and a Penalty Shootout
Three play modes carry the whole game. Friendly Match is the quick one, Penalty Kicks strips everything down to nerve from twelve yards, and Competitions is where a run actually means something.
- The World Cup and the Women’s World Cup take you through a group stage and out the other side, with the standings table updating after every result and the knockout bracket narrowing until only one side is left.
- Copa America Centenario and European Cup 2016 recreate two continental summers, each with its own field of nations to pick from and its own trophy sitting at the end of a short, unforgiving run of matches.
- The Pixel Cups for men and women, the Pixel League and the Pixel Tournament fill out the cabinet with the game’s own invented competitions, including a league season long enough to punish a bad month rather than a bad afternoon.
Every side comes rated across attack, midfield, defense and goalkeeping, and you set the formation before kickoff. Choosing a five at the back and grinding out a one nil is as legitimate a route to the trophy as picking the strongest team on the list.
Best Played With Someone Beside You
Single player against the computer is the training ground. The game comes alive with a second person in the room: head to head on a shared screen, or Party Mode carrying two players through an entire competition together. Full controller support means a pair of pads and one display is the whole setup, and Steam Remote Play Together stretches the couch to a friend in another city when it has to.
Pixel Art with an Arcade Heartbeat
The art and the soundtrack are pointed squarely at the arcade football of the 80s and 90s, down to the crowd packed into the stands and the sponsor boards running along the touchline. Stadiums are chosen before kickoff and the surfaces change with them, from a crisply mown pitch under floodlights to a worn, churned-up surface or an open stretch of sand. Steam Achievements track the run, and Steam Cloud keeps your progress where you left it.
Pick a nation, set your formation and find out how far one well-timed shot can carry you.
