NUTMEG! A Nostalgic Deckbuilding Football Manager

Lost my interest pretty quickly. The gameplay loop is pretty simple but in my opinion not interesting. The card game vs management sim themes blend well, but on each end of the game they are just very shallow and there are not any interesting decisions to make. And the UI is just a disaster. It's fine once you get accustomed to it but it is initially quite frustrating, and unfortunately takes away from the immersion if anything. I don't want have to click into the computer and navigate a variety of websites to get news from the rest of the english leagues.

Played about 5 seasons thus far - really incredible game. Ignore anyone who says the game is grindy - whole point of the game is to take a division 4 team and help them reach the top. Beginning of the game is hard, you'll be losing most of the games you play. But the more you play, the better cards you get for your matches, the more money you'll have to buy players, the more your players will develop... This is just the sports game I needed. To hell with 2K and the yearly FIFA releases, this is where we at.

Good concept, but every part of the game is subpar. The deckbuilding just influences RNG meaning your choices don't really matter. If you get slightly lucky you can reuse your cards, but if you are unlucky you are punished twice, because every card played lowers your players stamina making your RNG even worse. For the management part: You can not train all of your players skills, there is a hard cap forcing you to click every week to switch training. You can upgrade your stadium, but added building are only one level. The tutorial doesn't explain everything you need to know, for example... what does team spirit do or why does fan support drop? What was the price I actually bought a player for. So much information is missing to make it a manager. Youth players exist, but at the point I got the academy all players offered were too bad to make even selling worthwhile. tldr: I like the idea, but you get a bad deck builder (the game is based on RNG, but not card drawing, just pure RNG) and a rudimentary manager.

Scratches the itch that FM left behind

First impressions of the gameplay and management are solid. I'll explain why my review is a first impression later. The card system works seamlessly to a football match, with each card being played to affect the outcome of an attack. I would like to tinker with the game more and I'm sure I would enjoy it. Would recommend to Football Manager fans like myself. ON THE TOPIC OF FOOTBALL MANAGER: The Management UI focuses too much on design and aesthetic, the menu looking like an office from the 80s. Which is cool and all, except for the fact that due to the design, navigating ANYTHING is a chore. This is why I'm writing this review after just 49 minutes. Even though it looks nice and authentic and all that jazz, it navigates WORSE than Football Manager 26. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the matches. But the UI makes me shudder. It needs an option to streamline everything, or at least disable the scene transitions. Just some feedback to the devs. This has been a huge roadblock for me. Still recommended though for the card battling gameplay.

The demo was actually really good, but the full game feels way too random and a lot of the systems just do not make sense. There are constant random events that just are not fun, and most mechanics barely get explained at all. For example, how can my team have 70% Possession, but the moment I broadcast the match and manually play it, the enemy team somehow has possession the entire time, even immediately after they score on me? It feels completely disconnected from what the game is telling me. Formations also seem to have almost no impact. At best it feels like they change outcomes by maybe 1-3%, which makes the whole system feel pointless. Either the game logic makes no sense, or the game does a terrible job explaining what is actually happening and why. Progression mostly seems like you just grind 6 matches or so, so you get a new pool of players and staff members to choose from. However the staff responsible for finding better staff and new players have a low effectivity scoring so how are you supposed to progress? I genuinely do not understand how the progression system works. It is extremely slow and again none of your choices and effort seem to really matter. Also some bugs/issues: - You can broadcast a match where your substitutes are injured or red carded, and if you cannot swap them with a healthy and available player, the menu softlocks and you get stuck. - After a season ends, players seem to lose skill levels for no clear reason. I do not understand if this is intended or a bug, but it feels bad and confusing, because there is no sense of progression and what's the point of staying with your starter club then? After 3 seasons, I have to say, this game does extremely poorly at explaining stuff and rewarding your efforts/choices. Also the To-Do's are so hard to understand what they want from me

Let me start by saying that this game is - no doubt - in my personal top 20 games of all-time. Consider that when I say, I'm really NOT a fan of card games, or roguelikes (in-fact, I don't really know what that means, but I've seen it written when talking about this game). So for me to love this game as much as I do, is some indicator as to how special I think this game is. I played the demo, and it didn't click with me, because I just couldn't understand the matchday gameplay and had no idea which cards I should be playing when there were so many choices. But then I'd lie in bed at night thinking "what if I'd not wasted my money on that player that got injured", or "what if I'd played the -30 stamina card, would that have stopped them scoring and got us a point"... Thank God for the demo, because I kept coming back, I kept learning, and now - whenever I have time to play this game - it's impossible to put down, because I want to sign the unknown youth player Mr. A. Shearer my scouts have discovered, but I also want to afford a youth academy, so I can't save my game and stop playing... I just need to get through one more month... Just one more... Then another... Then, oh, it's 2am? The aesthetic is amazing (and the way it changes depending on the period is really cool) - the way your club evolves is great - how quickly you can move through seasons is vital (when the game covers such a long period of time) - and the gameplay is a lot of fun (if anything, I wish it was slightly more complex at this point). If this was a mobile/tablet game, I don't think I'd ever sleep (but please think about it!) - and I really, really hope a sequel comes along at some point. I want to give you guys more money at the earliest opportunity, because as a long-time football fan (a Tranmere Rovers supporter/sufferer), I needed a game like this in my life more than I realised. (I love Football Manager and how complex the modern game is, but this is the perfect pick-me-up game and an amazing, lovingly-crafted nostalgia trip that I absolutely adore. I can only imagine the potential in a sequel that gave the player even more to do, and more ways to change history.) I wrote this review to say thank you, rather than help potential buyers make their mind up (the demo will do that I'm sure - but if you're on the fence, don't think twice and buy this game). So - thank you, for creating something I love so much.

Match Attax with a retro twist. Really fun and addictive football card game, and it runs flawlessly on Steam Deck. Make sure you do the tutorial first though — it explains everything properly and makes the game much easier to get into.

An absolute banger. Such an underrated football management game that deserves far more attention. The progression is satisfying, the mechanics are easy to learn but surprisingly deep, and experimenting with different card combinations keeps every season interesting I Highly recommend