Released just before the World Cup kicks off, this upstart football game is positioning itself as a credible alternative to EA Sports FC

This month something extremely unusual happened in the video game world: someone launched a new football game. It used to be that the market could support a vast array of contenders, from arcade kickabouts such as Super Sidekicks and Hat Trick Hero, to serious simulations named Actua Soccer or This Is Football, to eccentric oddities such as Namco’s LiberoGrande which made you experience the whole match as a single onfield player.

For the past decade plus, however, the scene has been dominated EA’s Fifa series, now EA Sports FC. With the exception of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer, now eFootball, there have been few competitors – and few plucky upstarts.

When Ben Elton didn’t distract from the pain of moving my body, I found the perfect solution – the interactive smartphone game Zombies, Run!

At 56, I am running my first marathon, an old, fat, bald dad surrounded by millennials in body-hugging Lycra and smiles that look AI-generated. But I am ahead of them. For they are only competing for positions and personal bests, and I am being chased by zombies.

The black dog of depression hit me around the time of my last birthday. I didn’t feel I had achieved anything of note for an eternity. I used to work out but, for years, work kept getting in the way. I decided to kill two circling, carcass-sniffing vultures with one stone and run my first marathon.

For some, creating a smash hit puzzle would have been enough to kick back for life. But for the Josh Wardles and Timothée Chalamets of the world, not even the moon is enough

He is one letter away from being a household name. Now Josh Wardle, the inventor of Wordle, has launched a new online game, and in doing so, provided an interesting insight into ambition.

For some, creating a global smash hit puzzle so zeitgeisty and popular it becomes part of millions of strangers’ daily routines and is bought by the New York Times for seven figures would have been sufficient for a lifetime. Rather than face inevitable comparison and potential disappointment by attempting That Difficult Second Album, they would have just kicked back on their yacht and called it a day.

Josh Wardle hopes his digital take on the cryptic crossword can be a gradual on-ramp crossing the cultural divide between Britain and the US

In 2021, Josh Wardle became a household name almost overnight. His digital game, Wordle, turned a simple guessing game into a global morning ritual: six guesses, one word, and a grid of coloured squares shared across social media feeds.

It became a cultural phenomenon; bought within months by the New York Times for a seven-figure sum.

Buying the Zombies, Run! studio wasn’t part of my plan, but our post-apocalypse ​game has a story that makes people feel seen

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A few days ago, I clicked a button on my phone to send funds to a company in Singapore and so took ownership of the video game I co-created and am lead writer for: Zombies, Run! I am a novelist, I wrote the bestselling, award-winning The Power, which was turned into an Amazon Prime TV series starring Toni Collette. What on earth am I doing buying a games company?

Well. First of all. Zombies, Run! is special. It’s special to me – the game started as a Kickstarter and the community that grew up around it has always been incredibly supportive of what we’re doing. And it’s special in what it does. It’s a game to exercise with. You play it on your smartphone – iPhone or Android – and we tell stories from the zombie apocalypse in your headphones to encourage you to go further, faster, or just make exercise less boring. Games are so often portrayed as the bad entertainment form, but I made a game that fundamentally helps people to be healthier.