Pro Jank Footy is an Australian Rules footy game where the rules stop being rules about ninety seconds in.
It landed on August 12, 2026 from Powerbomb Games and Tinker Town. You can get it on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch and Switch 2 for about fifteen bucks.
Most people who bounce off it early do the same thing. They sit down expecting a football sim.
It isn’t one.
Pro Jank Footy is Mario Kart with an oval ball.
Every goal you kick hands the other side a blue shell. Once that clicks, everything else about this game starts making sense.
And no, you don’t need to know a single thing about Aussie Rules to be good at it. I’d argue knowing the real sport actively slows you down for the first hour.
Play two matches of Normal Footy before you touch a single power-up
There’s a mode called Normal Footy that turns all the cards off. No seagulls, no shopping trolleys, no screen flipping upside down.
Play two full matches there before anything else. That’s it, two.
You need to learn what the ball does when nothing weird is happening to it. The oval bounce is unpredictable enough on its own.
While you’re in there, get the scoring straight. The middle posts are worth 6 points and the outside posts are worth 1.
Quarters are short and there are four of them. A whole match runs about five minutes, so a couple of practice games costs you nothing.
You can’t read the chaos until you can already move the ball.
Learn four buttons and ignore everything else
The control scheme looks like a 90s arcade sports game because that’s exactly what it’s copying. That’s good news for you.
On PlayStation you need Cross to kick and pass, Circle to bump and tackle, Triangle to switch to your nearest teammate, and the right trigger to sprint. Same layout in spirit on the other systems.
That’s four inputs. Everything else can wait.
The one thing worth actually drilling is tap versus hold on the kick button. Tapping gives you a quick short pass and holding charges up a long bomb down the field.
Beginners hold it every single time. Then they wonder why the ball keeps sailing over their teammate’s head into a pack of defenders.
Also, sprinting drains a stamina bar, and so does tackling. Run that bar to zero and you’re a traffic cone in shorts.
Marks happen on their own, so go stand where the ball is going
You don’t press a button to take a mark in this game. If your player is in the flight path when the ball comes down, you take it.
This one mechanic changes how you should be playing defence entirely.
Stop chasing the guy with the ball. Chasing the carrier is what everybody does for their first three matches and it accomplishes nothing.
Instead, watch where the kick is heading and get a body under it. You’ll pick off more possession standing still in the right spot than sprinting around in the wrong one.
Play the space, not the player.
The bump is free, the tackle is not
Both live on the same button, which confuses people early.
A single press is a bump. It’s a shoulder into somebody, it can knock the ball loose, and it costs you almost nothing.
You can absolutely flatten an opponent with one of these, and yes, it’s as satisfying as it sounds.
Holding the button commits you to a tackle. That’s a bigger swing that burns stamina and locks you into an animation.
Miss it and you’re standing still while the play runs past you.
Bump early and often, tackle only when you’re sure.
Kick to Kick is the practice mode nobody bothers with
There’s a mode called Kick to Kick that drops you on an empty pitch with no opposition and no clock.
Nobody uses it. Everybody should.
Ten minutes in there teaches you the charge timing on your kicks better than five straight losses will. You get to miss shots without a scoreboard laughing at you.
Work out how long a hold you need from directly in front, then from the boundary. That distance sense is the difference between a goal and a behind, which is a five point swing every time.
Every goal you kick is a blue shell for the other guy
Here’s the mechanic the entire game is built around.
When you score, the team that just got scored on picks a power-up card. They get three options pulled from a pool of over 150, and they choose one.
So scoring is not purely a good thing. Scoring is a trade.
Back to the Mario Kart thing. You just crossed into first place, and the game handed the guy behind you something horrible.
The cards break down into two rough types, and telling them apart fast is the most useful skill in the game.
Buffs change your team. Bigger players, faster players, longer kicks, better ball handling, that sort of stuff.
Rule rewrites change the match itself. Score resets, goals swapping ends, extra teams appearing on the field, players losing their arms.
Buffs are annoying. Rule rewrites are what actually lose you games.
A six point lead means nothing if the card they just picked wipes the scoreboard.
There are also meat pies sitting out on the pitch during matches. Run through one and you trigger a power on the spot.
Grab them. They’re free and your opponent will take them if you don’t.
The dumb looking cards are the dangerous ones
Some of these cards don’t touch the football at all. They go after your eyeballs.
The screen flips. A DVD logo starts bouncing around in front of the action. A flock of seagulls decides your player looks like a hot chip.
Your instinct is to squint harder at the ball. Wrong move.
When your view gets sabotaged, watch your own player instead of the ball and keep every pass short. Little handballs to teammates you can actually see.
Ride it out. These effects are temporary and the other side is usually panicking just as hard as you are.
Season mode punishes losing, so stop coasting
Season mode is a ladder of eight rival teams, built like one of those old Mortal Kombat towers where you climb one opponent at a time.
Lose and your run is done. There’s no retry button waiting for you.
The tutorial doesn’t really prepare you for this part, which is why the whole mode feels harder than it should at first. You’re not bad at the game, you just got handed a gauntlet with no explanation.
Two things will save your runs.
First, the AI plays noticeably meaner when it’s behind. A three goal lead in the third quarter is not a reason to relax, it’s a warning that the comeback is loading.
Second, when you’re winning, think hard about whether you actually want that next goal. Sometimes running the clock down in the middle of the field beats handing over another card.
Ever heard of a footy game where scoring can be the wrong call?
There’s no shame in turning the powers off
Versus mode lets you disable the power-ups completely, and this is not a beginner crutch.
Turn them off when you’re teaching somebody the game. Turn them off when you and a mate want to settle who’s actually better at footy.
Because with the cards on, a real chunk of matches come down to luck. Somebody gets a monster power at the right moment and that’s the game.
That’s the design working as intended, not something you’re going to outplay. It’s the same reason nobody claims Mario Kart is a fair test of driving skill.
So play Pro Jank for the mess and play Normal Footy when you want a fair fight. Both are right there in the menu.
Your first win is going to feel like a total fluke, probably because it was. Keep going anyway, because match ten is where you stop reacting to the nonsense and start using it.
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Images in this article are from the Pro Jank Footy page on Steam and used under Fair Use.