In case you weren’t aware, Japan has its own AFL association, with numerous teams that play both locally and at the international level. I know this because while watching the FIFA World Cup final at a random Irish bar in Tokyo last month I got to talking to someone from the city’s own team, the Tokyo Goannas. I had to admit, with shame, that I had never watched a complete AFL match and had almost no idea how the sport works. This was in response to them asking me whether I’d heard of Pro Jank Footy and if I was excited to play it, to which I gave them an emphatic yes.
The look I received as this person attempted to digest those two bits of information is universally accepted as one that says “The actual f**k, mate?”
Yeah, nah! I thought. I know it seems silly to be excited about a video game based on a sport I have zero interest in, but Pro Jank Footy isn’t your regular sport game. It’s arcade-y, ridiculous, light on rules and heavy on fools. I shan’t need to know a lick about the intricacies of fanging a pill-shaped leather ball around a grass oval to play this particular take on the great Australian pastime – in fact, I might pick up on the sport through playing the game. Right?
Wrong. Having taken in a number of matches, some wins but most crushing, nationally televised losses, I believe I am now less sure about AFL than when I went in. The Guardian recently published an article in which developer David Ashby provides an anecdote about how the Japanese gamers they’ve interacted with believed the sport of footy was fictional, invented by the studio. In complete spite of my conversation with a Tokyo local that plays the game professionally, in Japan no less, I’m beginning to form the same opinion.
I don’t know enough about AFL to truly understand where the real game ends and Pro Jank Footy’s absurdity begins. I’m aware of some Aussie teams, like the one with the magpie and the one with a mosquito named Skeeta Reynolds, but how should I know if the Port Noarlunga Chips or the Salisbury Park Snags are made up? If someone told me they barracked for the “North Problem,” I’d take them at their word. I cannot say, with any degree of certainty, whether or not “tans the possum skin,” “unscrews a fine vintage” or “spoon-feeds the mince” are genuine footy slang, and so I have no choice but to believe it all.
Anyway, perhaps you do understand footy, and Pro Jank Footy’s promise of being an AFL game that adds heaping gobfuls of NBA Jam-style arcade absurdity to the function (or just an AFL game that functions) is enough of a drawcard. The good news is, Pro Jank is a wonderful little game that’s immensely simple to pick up and play, and delivers hard on completely chaotic, hugely comedic fun. It’s something of a love letter to the 16/32-bit era of sports games, but it also takes some cues from modern prank-em-ups with its power-up system.
See, scoring points is naturally the name of the game here, but being on the losing end can be just as fruitful. Should your opponent kick a goal, you’ll be presented with a choice of three possible power-ups pulled from a random pool of something like 150 of the things. These can have all manner of effects, from plainly helpful, like increased speed and range or obstacles spawned on your opponent’s goal, to the ridiculous – like being able to teleport, turn your team into giants, unleash “Dad’s Car” on the pitch or kick goals accurately. This instantly makes Pro Jank Footy a game that you can’t feasibly win on purpose, and that’s a beautiful thing.
Games move quickly, power-ups get hectic, keeping track of scores or really anything that’s happening becomes a mess. There’s just something so fundamentally good about a sports game that’s this unserious, especially when played with friends. Pro Jank Footy offers both local and online play, though I mainly tested out the former with my partner, and I can see it becoming something of a staple party game in Aussie households. The mode selection is otherwise fairly anemic, only offering up a barebones “season” mode along with a hands-off spectator mode and a kick-to-kick option for practicing your moves. Modelled so closely off of early arcade and home console experiences, it’s hard to expect more, but there’s definitely not a lot here for solo players.
I’m also a little disappointed with how basic the UX is. Playing on PC, there were zero options for tailoring the visuals (outside of the default CRT-style filter, which is neat), and I actually had to go out of my way to buy a third party tool that could force the game into a window and resolution of my choice. There’s also no button remapping, and once you’ve selected a mode it’s seemingly impossible – as far as I could tell – to back out of it without loading into a proper match and then exiting from the pause screen. It feels like a lot of little gripes to level at a small studio, but it all adds up.
What’s not lacking is the overall presentation which, in addition that CRT filter, is just pure, pixelated goodness. Everything is served up with a level of sincerity that matches the games it riffs on, only the actual content can best be described as “energetically dumb.” Every time I get a power-up I haven’t seen I have to stop to appreciate the art, likewise with each new and more concering “oval” I play on. I’m particularly fond of the bowling alley-style goal celebration animatics, almost all of which surely cause serious emotional damage to whoever’s on the losing end (ie, me).
It also wouldn’t be right for me not to mention Broden Kelly‘s go as the game’s full-time commentator. Sketch comedy trio Aunty Donna’s member-most-likely-to-own-more-than-one-esky, Kelly brings an appreciable level of enthusiasm and ocker-ocity to saying sequences of words that may very well have never been uttered in their specific order before. The lines come thick and fast, maybe too thick and fast (and I never say that) to the point that you’ll be hearing repeats mere minutes in, but there’s just something about the man’s cadence and resonance that makes my ear canals dilate.
All said, Pro Jank Footy is a silly bugger of a video game, one that sometimes feels as half-baked as a club canteen’s meat pies but is arguably just as representative of the authentic experience. If this is what we’re exporting to the rest of the world to showcase the height of Australian athleticism and sportsmanship, then job bloody well done, I reckon.
Reviewed on PC | Review copy supplied by publisher
Great
- A gleefully stupid take on the iconic Aussie sport
- Huge number of creative, chaotic power-ups
- A great visual representation of early arcade sports games
- Broden Kelly says things I don't believe humankind had ever recorded prior
Not great
- Very basic mode offerings
- Lacking in a lot of useful UX settings
- I keep bloody losing
Born into the world of video games through SEGA, and in particular Sonic the Hedgehog, Kieron’s gaming tastes now consist of the latest, shiny AAA thing, an indie darling or two, and an embarrassing number of hours of Balatro.