Foot Tennis Stars 2.0: New Arenas, Nations Cup and Real Athletes

Some weeks you add a feature. This week we tore Foot Tennis Stars down to the floorboards and built it again. The result will be version 2.0, and it's the biggest update the game has ever had.

Why rebuild at all?

The game played well. People who tried it enjoyed the rallies, the bicycle kicks, the online matches. But it didn't look like a game you'd stop scrolling for. Every arena was built from simple shapes and flat colours. There was no real light, no texture, no atmosphere. We kept telling ourselves the gameplay mattered more, and it does. But a player decides in about two seconds whether a game is worth trying, and those two seconds are pure visuals.

So we asked a simple question: what would it take for someone to open the game and think, wait, what is this?

Nine arenas, all new

Every venue was rebuilt with modern lighting, real-world textures and photographed skies.

The Indoor Hall now has polished parquet that reflects the lights, steel roof trusses, padded walls, folding stands and a scoreboard that shows the real score.
The Rooftop sits above a city at night, with string lights, glass railings and windows glowing in the buildings around you.
The Beach has proper sand, palm trees and a lifeguard tower at sunset.
The Snowy Peak, the Desert, the Park, the Night Pitch and the Training Ground each got their own world, not just a new colour.

The ball, the net and the lines stayed exactly as readable as before. Prettier must never mean harder to play.

The Nations Cup gets its moment

The national team tournament is now called the Nations Cup, and it finally feels like a tournament. It's played in a two-tier stadium full of fans in team colours, under floodlight towers.

Before each match the players walk out of the tunnel while the crowd rises and fireworks go off. Win the final and your player lifts the trophy over their head, confetti and all. Getting the hands to actually hold the cup took more attempts than we'd like to admit. And yes, the national flags are now drawn properly, to their official proportions.

New players: real athletes

The old characters looked like cartoon superheroes. The new ones are realistic athletic men and women, with different body types, faces and hair (including afro and braids). Your name and number are printed on the back of your shirt. They celebrate a point with a fist pump, cheer after a win and show their frustration after a loss.

If you already play, don't worry: your saved player keeps the same choices. They just look like an athlete now.

A first impression worth the wait

The first time you open 2.0, a short scene plays. The camera dives over the stadium at night, the floodlights switch on, two players walk out, and a rally ends in a slow-motion bicycle kick. You can skip it, of course. But we hope you won't want to the first time.

What's still cooking

Aiming and outs: right now the ball almost never goes out, which makes rallies safe but a little flat. In 2.0, a normal shot stays as safe as today. If you choose to aim for the line, though, you take a real risk, and so do the bots. The game won't get harder; it'll get more exciting.
Testing on real phones: all of this needs to run smoothly on older devices too, so 2.0 goes out only after it does.

Foot Tennis Stars 2.0 is coming very soon to the App Store, with Android to follow. Thanks for playing the early versions. They're the reason this one exists.