The EA Sports FC 27 release date is believed to be set for 25 September, with Electronic Arts' annual football simulation video game expected to be available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.
But after disappointment over the bugs, mechanics and aggressive microtransactions in last year's installment, how about making your own football game instead?
Free and open-source Godot Engine is one of our picks as the best game development software, and it's becoming increasingly popular with indie developers. A comprehensive free course available on YouTube could help you get a game on to the pitch after just 12-hours of study time, and all the assets are provided for free, making this a timely opportunity to learn how to build video games (you might want one of the best laptops for game development).
We've mentioned the GameDev Tavern before for their free Dungeon Crawler 3D game Godot tutorials. Their Arcade Soccer Tutorial is just as comprehensive, and, best of all, it's suitable for beginners, making it perfect for anyone inspired by the FIFA World Cup final as Argentina take on Spain tomorrow
The free 12-hour YouTube course is broken down into 24 digestible 30-minute episodes. The first episode (above) focuses on setting up Godot. Subsequent sessions look at movement, scalable state machines, specific moves like dribbling, shooting and bicycle kicks, AI-driven steering behaviours and decision making and using shaders to change players' skin colour.
There are also episodes on generating squads from JSON data, designing the UI and adding effects.
The assets are all available to download via GitHub , and you can play the final game you'll be building online via the Gadgaming site on Itich.co.
