Do foot tricks with a soccer ball and nothing else in Kickerinho World.  It’s available on Nintendo Switch and mobile devices, but reviewed on Switch here.

When you start, you’ll use the L and R trigger buttons to bounce a soccer ball on your left or right foot or knee.  You have to time it just right to keep in in the air.  Kind of reminds me of hackey sack, too.  Once you do this enough times, you can do a trick.  These including holding the ball on your foot for a while, or bouncing it on your head.  These tricks require more complicated button movements, like holding down the L or R buttons or pressing both together.  As you play, you’ll earn coins which you can use to buy more goodies.

In the main menu, you can select to play the game, or other things.  Toggle sounds and language in options, or pick different backgrounds in Travel.  Some locations you may have to buy with coins.  You can also use coins to buy things to customize your in-game player.  You can choose different hairstyles, shirts, pants, shoes, soccer balls, and skin color.  Again, some of these things you need coins to buy.  You can also buy power-ups in the shop, which makes doing tricks easier, or even buy new tricks.  And finally, you can view ‘quests’ or goals and leaderboard scores online.

My main problem with the game is that when you learn a new trick, they’ll give pictures cues to help you with timing, like diminishing circles or meters to let you know when to tap or hold the buttons.  But when you play regularly, you don’t get any of that, which makes it nigh unplayable.  Plus you can tell this was originally meant to be a simple time wasting mobile game.  Probably would’ve been better as a mini-game in a real soccer title.

Kid Factor:

Nothing violent or objectionable here.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers may find it too difficult.  Kickerinho World is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews