EA FC 27's Open World Has Dodgeball, Basketball, and Mbappe to Chat With
The Grounds, FC 27's new open-world hub, packs in minigames ranging from balloon-popping dodgeball to foot-powered basketball, plus real soccer stars wandering around as NPCs.
A Soccer Game That Lets You Play Dodgeball
For a franchise built on simulating the beautiful game, EA FC 27 is taking some genuinely odd and entertaining detours. The Grounds, the mode’s centerpiece new addition, is a full open-world city split into three districts where up to 100 players can roam freely, jump into Pro Clubs matches, and apparently spend a surprising amount of time hitting each other with balls to pop balloons.
That balloon-popping dodgeball mode is one of the stranger minigames scattered across the map, and it sounds like a blast. As reported by Dexerto following a developer preview event, players can eliminate opponents by landing shots that pop all three of their balloons, which function as lives. A dedicated dodge button helps you avoid incoming fire, and invincibility power-ups and tire obstacles scattered around the arena keep things chaotic. It is, technically, still a soccer game.
The dodgeball mode sits alongside a handful of other minigames EA has built into The Grounds. One changes its scoring rules on the fly every minute, so you might need to score off a wall bounce one moment and do something entirely different the next. Another is essentially basketball played with your feet. These are not the kinds of modes anyone expected from a FIFA successor, and that is kind of the point.
Street Football Roots and Rush Returns
Not all of The Grounds is chaos, of course. A healthy chunk of the minigame offerings lean into the street football tradition that FIFA Street and Volta helped establish. Small-sided matches run from 1v1 all the way up to 3v3, spread across pitches that vary in size and layout throughout the open city. Rush games, the 4v4 format with an AI keeper that appeared in FC 25, also return here.
The pitches are scattered throughout the world rather than collected in a single menu, which fits the exploratory nature of The Grounds. The idea seems to be that wandering the city and stumbling onto a pickup game feels more organic than navigating a mode select screen. Whether that translates into players actually walking around versus fast-traveling to their preferred mode remains to be seen, but the intention is clear.
Real Players, Actual Dialogue
Perhaps the most unexpected element of The Grounds is that real soccer stars appear in the city as NPCs. According to Dexerto’s preview coverage, players can walk up to figures like Mbappe and choose from multiple dialogue options. The details on how deep those conversations go were not fully specified in the preview, but the implication is that these licensed athletes are woven into the world as characters you actually interact with rather than just faces on menus or loading screens.
That is a meaningful shift in how soccer games use their licenses. Rather than a star’s likeness existing solely in a card pack or a starting lineup, having them present and talkable-to in a shared social space gives their inclusion a different texture entirely. It also puts some real pressure on the writing team.
The Bigger Picture for Pro Clubs
The Grounds functions as an extension of Pro Clubs, which has traditionally been one of the more community-driven modes in the series. Dropping 100 players into a shared open city rather than a lobby screen is a significant structural bet. All the minigames feed XP back into your Pro, so time spent goofing around in dodgeball is not divorced from progression.
Dexerto noted that the developers addressed concerns about The Grounds becoming a microtransaction delivery vehicle at the preview event, though the specifics of that conversation were only summarized. What is clearer from the preview is that the mode was designed with activity density in mind. Three districts, multiple pitch types, wacky minigames, real player NPCs, and a live online population of up to 99 others is a lot to build around what used to be a fairly straightforward multiplayer mode. Whether FC 27 can keep all those players in the same city long enough to matter is the real question.
What is The Grounds in EA FC 27?
The Grounds is a new open-world hub in EA FC 27 that serves as a major extension of the Pro Clubs mode. Players create a Pro and are dropped into an open city with three districts alongside up to 99 other players, where they can explore, play minigames, and launch Pro Clubs matches.
What minigames are available in The Grounds?
According to Dexerto, minigames include small-sided street football matches ranging from 1v1 to 3v3, Rush 4v4 games with an AI goalkeeper, a dodgeball-style mode where players pop each other's balloons, a mode where the scoring rules change every minute, and a basketball variant played with your feet.
Can you interact with real soccer players in EA FC 27's The Grounds?
Yes. Real soccer players, including Mbappe, appear in The Grounds as NPCs with multiple dialogue options players can choose from, as reported by Dexerto following a developer preview event.