NUTMEG! A Nostalgic Deckbuilding Football Manager

Dream game, with amazing presentation and theme. Need some updates to reach full potential, then I will go nuts.

I don't play a lot of football games, but decided I'd give this a shot as I got it in a bundle. Had a huge amount of fun the first season with it, but after that, things quickly went downhill. The random events you get are just stupid. Even the game tells you that they are almost always bad. The first one I got, my coach stole all my money (not a huge deal, managed without and got it back). The second one wrecked my whole season because it was raining every day for the next three months for MY TEAM ONLY and increased the injury chance. Almost all of my players ended up injured that full next month which bled into the month after which was, no surprise, another bad event. Is the purpose to make the game hard? Because it's difficult enough without these, they just make it unfun. Training also results in injuries and doesn't give visible upgrades. You have no idea what they're actually doing because there's not enough information there. Players get better and worse and I have no clue why. I have no idea how to trade for better players than ones slightly better than my current ones because they don't come up as available. Is this something that just happens the longer you play? The scout seems to do nothing of importance in regards to that as well.

GOTY!

Not sure if I'm into the actual match gameplay yet - not quite enough going on in terms of visibility and feedback for me - but the Tellyfax referred to Margaret Thatcher as a milk snatcher, so that's a thumbs up to start with. The aesthetics are great fun. As an FM tragic, this might be a bit simplistic for me, but I do love a good deckbuilder. There's a lot to enjoy. edit after 5 hours played: Yeah this game is fun as hell. A lot of 80s English cultural references going over my head, some minor UI annoyances and the match engine is a bit opaque (though I think that's by design as it wants you to learn which paths go where) but overall it's a good time and well worth the money. Clearly made with a lot of love. A warm hug of a football game. If you liked Football, Tactics and Glory, you will like this. My only real gripe is that the card pack system is even MORE opaque than the match system and it makes it really hard to take advantage of my players' and staff members' special traits, which makes the whole process of picking cards and playing matches more homogenous than it could be, and than the game seems to promise it will be. But maybe that will improve with time and experience as well.

A really fun and well made casual football manager like. Really loving how simple it is to pick up and play. While it's obviously not as deep as FM, it's still pretty solid in making your choices feel like they matter and feeling like there is a way to dig a crap team out of regulation. Also really glad to hear the devs are still continuing to put out updates and new features. Can't wait to see what they add next!

Great game. Love the popular culture references on teletext. The card game element takes some time to get used to, but once you've figured that out its great. Its addictive, I'm in my third season so far, not doing very well but that's part of the fun

the most approachable management sim i've played in a while, systems are deep but not hard to understand and there's not constant juggling. plays great with controller!

Enjoyed this more than I expected. Great Steam Deck game for travel. Enjoyed learning new mechanics and slowly grinding the team upwards.

The idea of the game is kind of fun, however playing is so... lifeless. I get one card every moment but if I get unluck (happens fairly often) i don't even get to use the card as it doesn't fit. Then when the attack or moment matches up i use the card and the undesired outcomes happens anyway... This would be fine if it was a one off on tough matches but it feels like it is what happens in every single game. I have better results when I simulate the matches at that point i might as well just go and play football manager.

Funny thing — I don’t even like football, but I loved the principle behind this, so I thought, what the heck, let’s give it a try. I’m so glad I did, because I’m having a blast. It’s super easy to pick up but has a surprising amount of depth. Nothing beats scoring in the dying minutes to win, or having only a 10% chance to sign a player and landing them! Great fun!