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This man's Twitter joke about making a soccer game escalated hilariously

'Kickmen' is a football game like no other.

Sam Haysom

on April 29, 2016

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

LONDON -- There are plenty of football games in this world made by people who know a lot about the sport, but there's always been a tragic shortage of football games made by people without a clue.

Until now, that is.

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British game developer Dan Marshall -- a man with a self-proclaimed lack of interest in football -- has turned a simple Twitter joke into an actual working football game.

It all started in early April.

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Things quickly escalated from there.

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As the weeks progressed, Kickmen was born.

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Soon there was even a trailer.

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At this stage, Marshall is on to the finer details.

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"I have no interest whatsoever in football, it passes me by completely," Marshall told Mashable. "I've picked up some bits and bobs over the years because, well, I'm not a complete idiot, but I'm being gleefully flippant with what I know in order to make the game better."

Marshall went on to explain how the whole thing snowballed from a simple Twitter joke.

"I fancied making something as a break from the game I'm making, and was going to make a sort of silly 'kick a ball against the wall' simulator, but it all just took off in the most ridiculous way and now it's somehow ballooned into a proper football game with all the rules made up and I have no idea what I'm doing," he explained. "I'm well out of my depth."

"I'm well out of my depth."

Kickmen was inspired by '90s video game Sensible Soccer, but Marshall said it's gone more in the direction of Speedball -- another game he enjoyed when he was younger. "It's kind of a mash up of those two, with some cool slow-down bullet time effects for drift kicking and tackling moves," he said. "Other than that, it's football but with all the rules sort of half-remembered from my childhood and wrong."

Marshall described the reaction Kickmen has received as "insane."

"It's a silly little badly drawn game so to see it blow up on Twitter the way it has is unreal. Last night it was the top Moment if you accidentally clicked the Moments tab on Twitter and my mentions just went unreadable. I don't know why -- maybe other people are as flippant about football as I am, or maybe they secretly fancy the idea of playing a football game but don't want to get bogged down in the realism. Maybe that's why Rocket League has done so well, too?

"It's all a bit of a blur, and it's all very odd. It's just a facetious football game, and yet people seem really into the idea. I'm touched."

Although Marshall doesn't have a release date yet -- he's only been working on it for a month -- he told us it'll probably be available on PC over the summer. "I'll also look at console versions if it does well," Marshall said.

Definitely one to keep an eye out for.

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