This game is an underrated gem, period.

But before I rave about the actual game, let me tell you a thing about their customer support.
So I purchased New Star Manager one day, installed it and couldn't run it. Did all the usual steps to troubleshoot, no luck.
Finally, I left a message in the Steam forums stating my problem.
The next day, the publisher got back to me, asking me to perform the usual troubleshooting steps again. No surprise, it didn't help.
Then I was given a beta code to install a version that writes a logfile so the devs could figure out what was wrong - and something was very wrong because that logfile wasn't even created.
Fast forward seven or eight versions that were exclusively adapted to fix my problem and I was finally happily playing New Star Soccer.
This is a small team and I'm a single customer. I would have accepted if they had told me to just get a refund and leave them alone but they insisted to fix my technical issues. That's the spirit, guys.

Now, back to the game.
It's ridiculously addictive and poses a threat to people like me who are very prone to the "just another round"-phenomenon. One match only takes a couple of minutes so why not play another one? Yeah, just one more!
Rinse, repeat, hours have passed.

The managing part is very well made. You buy buildings and coaches and they produce cards every X rounds. Those cards can improve your players or even add talented young players to your team. You constantly buy and sell players and keep an eye on player's moods because some players want to play all the time, others want their stats to improve. Ignore this and they'll play worse or even want to leave your team.

The sequences where you actually get to play are ingenious.
It doesn't look like a lot when you watch the gameplay on a video but it gets really tense against stronger opponents. They will score while you helplessly watch their score go up (you never play defense) and you only get a few chances to score for your team so you better make every attack count.
You can draw paths where you want your passive players to run without the ball, you can directly control the player with the ball. You can pass by clicking on another player but this will only get you so far - in stronger leagues, you'll mostly pass to where you want the receiving player to run.
The game pauses when the ball doesn't move so things get very tactical against stronger opponents.

I full-heartedly recommend this game.

So far so good. The PC version is fun. Reminds me of Sensible World of Soccer. It's slow paced and more tactical but it's an arcade and pretty easy to handle football managers. Scoring a goal after 10 passes is fun.
I have not had so much fun with a football game for years.
Pros:
+ decent tutorial
+ nice graphics - minimalistic but very nice
+ good ingame mechanics, very playable - all mouse controlled
+ slow paced and relaxing but not in the boring way - You can play 5 matches in 20 min no problem.
+ simple but fun club management (stadium, fitness, training, scout, club store, etc)
+ no microtransactions on pc version - loot cards are fun and not bad
+ clever way of stress management and player development (some players want to improve skills or get unhappy, some just need to play at all, some are old and lose stamina quickly or dont like other players, etc.)
+ squad assistant - helps to pick up optimal squad based on formation and energy of players in just 1 sec.
+ very low price and fast feedback from the authors on Fb

Cons:
- random names of players, but that is understandable with Fifa wanting millions for licenses

Overall - a very cheap and fun game.

Underneath its arcade façade lies a more complicated managerial experience. Although success sometimes relies on luck, with a random card-based system and mini games, it also demands a lot of thinking to keep players, fans, and the board happy.

A 15 Min video to show all you need to know about gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-IMvgVhPaM

I can see myself playing this game for a long time. It is very addictive and exciting football management game which although appears to be purely arcade, does contain some strategy and deep thinking to succeed.

You are not going to win trophies immediately. You really do feel like you are a struggling non-league club with all the money worries that involves. It is quite difficult to generate enough revenue to keep your squad and staff happy, to buy new players, to keep existing players and buy facilities. It feels like a constant battle and can feel quite exhausting sometimes.

You will be doing a lot of man management which mainly involves addressing players concerns and contracts. This was the most frustrating part of the game for me. The game is crying out for a contracts and concerns page. It would have been really useful if there was a page that listed your squad in order of contract time and immediate concerns.

This is mostly a random card based game and ultimately you are at the mercy of the cards you receive. You are not always in control. The cards you receive will determine your strategy. This can generate some genuinely exciting and frustrating moments. Getting the card you need to renew a contract on deadline day is dramatic but also equally frustrating when you don’t for example.

There are some interesting and imaginative ways of earning cards involving mini games, achievements, levelling up and managing facilities and staff efficiently. The cards are mainly random apart from a weekly choice. Unfortunately, the weekly choice does not contain a contract card and because the players demand ridiculously high renewal amounts you will often find that without a contract card you won’t be able to renew their contract and they get released on expiry.

The players contracts are quite short and it’s not unusual to find five players contracts running out simultaneously. This means you will end up losing players on a free transfer because you just don’t have enough money and/or contract cards for everyone.

I do think the contract demands are too high and you have to pay the whole contract in one go rather than pay them less on a weekly basis. Also, it would be nice if they didn’t leave immediately but stayed around for a few weeks, if happy, for you to either sort out their contract or release them. It can be very frustrating watching your star player leave on a free transfer.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1870122776

There are some financial decisions you can make like merchandise and ticket prices to alleviate financial pressures and you can buy cheap from the transfer market when it is open and develop these players with skill cards selling them on for a profit. The scope for managerial decisions is surprisingly in depth and there are a lot of things to think about and plan in advance to succeed.

This never feels like a chore mainly due to the excellent menu systems, colourful GUI and arcade feel. There is also an excellent tutorial at the beginning of the game and a comprehensive guide for you to reference whenever you want. I never struggled managing things like more advanced management sims because it always felt straight forward and not too deep. It has an excellent balance between casual play and managerial depth which made it enjoyable to play but also rewarding when you succeed. It is incredibly addictive.

You even get to play out the game once you have selected your team. Much akin to Football, Tactics and Glory, it had a more arcade feel as you can actually dribble with the ball and scenarios feel much more like a game of football rather than a tactical game of chess.

The arcade sequences are generated when a chance is produced. This can involve building up from the defence where a number of passes will be needed to generate a shot on goal, or an immediate shooting chance. There is quite a lot of variety in gameplay including free kicks, corners, headers and even over head kicks. You can determine the runs of players and then do a through ball and even recover the ball back with sliding or block tackles. Sometimes one chance can last three or more cycles if you win the ball back.

The rest of the action is text based and it is unfortunate that you don’t see the oppositions chances played out on screen, or at least get the option of this.

Also, you have one retry button which you have around two seconds to press before it disappears. Why have a time limit on it? On numerous occasions I missed pressing it because I was watching the replay or had my heads on my hand in frustration for missing a shot. Please take the time limit off.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1870123038

My favourite part of football management games is always the transfer market. I love delving into the market trying to find that hidden gem which will make me millions. This game doesn’t have a bad transfer market but it gets better and more detailed as you progress your scouting staff skills. There are plenty of useful filters to sort out possible targets and it is easy to find who you are looking for which is the crucial part.

The thing I really didn’t like about the transfer market however was the forced nature of the gambling mini game. On every contract talk you have with a player you have to play a mini game involving guessing whether the next number is higher or lower than the last number.

You have to guess four times. If you get it correct the contract price is lowered and if you get it wrong the contract price is increased. In my experience I got it wrong more often than I got it right meaning a player I could have afforded is now too expensive for me to buy. I would have much preferred the option to choose whether I wanted the gamble or not.


Apart from these minor complaints there is a solid and highly enjoyable management simulation game here. The arcade feel, with its bold and colourful looks and jaunty sound tracks makes for a refreshing change. The randomness of the cards adds to the excitement and frustration levels meaning you are constantly juggling demands of players and staff whilst also thinking about the board, press and fans satisfaction levels. There is certainly a lot to think about and should keep any management fan happy.

The arcade sequences are fun and add an extra dimension to gameplay. Some of the goals I produced were very satisfying and it felt exciting to play rather than just watch.

The game is full of interesting and imaginative designs with the mini-games and achievements adding to the addictive quality of the game.

If you are looking for a more relaxed and less serious managerial experience with a side load of arcade football action then I would highly recommend this game.

Curator Info:

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This game was received free through curator connect.

Football Manager franchise??? Why bother?

Play this instead (and consider "Football Tactics and Glory" as well)

Football Manager finally has real competition.

This game may not be as in depth, but your actions count and your decisions make a difference. Superb game. I'll be playing this for many months to come. My current favourite game.

Love the PC version, so much better than the mobile version as there are no microtransactions. If you release this version on mobile i would happily buy again

Would i recommend this game, hell yeah I have over 80 hours as testament to that.
It's a football game, it's a card building game, it's a strategy game.
All of the above are true and more.

You can play as one of the big teams or as i did start as your home town club and take them all the way to European glory.
The matches themselves at first seem a little basic but you can make such a difference to the outcome with your mouse dexterity and a clever substitution and some of the goals you can score are ronaldo-esque

The only con i would say is and at over 80 hours it's starting to get a little bit samey, my stadium and all amenities are upgraded to the max, most games offer little challenge as all my players are at Black level, I could of course swap leagues and start again but i think i have had my moneys worth

In conclusion this game isn't football manager, it doesn't try to be but what it does is create a refreshing spin on the football management genre and that can be no bad thing.

Way better than Fifa Career.

Tl;dr - most of my review is comparative, explaining why this game fits my preferences better than other soccer/football games. If you've played FIFA and find it too fast-paced and chaotic for you, you might like this a little better. If you've played Football Manager and find that it overwhelms you with too many choices and too much granularity, this might be more manageable for you. If you've played a little turn-based soccer game called Football Tactics and Glory, and found it to not be a very good simulation of soccer, this might be closer to the mark.

Full review - I can't think of another sports game that suits my tastes as well as this one. I don't have razor-sharp reflexes, or lots of experience playing fast-paced console games since I was young, so I'm not good at the EA-style games where you're fully controlling the players directly on the field. But if I swing all the way in the opposite direction and try one of those "spreadsheet simulator" management games, I feel like I'm being bombarded with too many choices and not enough clarity about what I need to do. It seems like a lot of those Manager games are built for hardcore fans of the sport, and intended to be played by people who already know what they need to do for their team to win. I'm looking for a video game that gives me the vicarious experience of managing a sports team, but in a greatly simplified way that doesn't require deep insider knowledge of the sport in real life.

Because I'm not good at handling the fast pace of the real-time sports games, I've long been interested in the possibilities of turn-based sports games. I feel like XCOM is a great example of how a game can simulate the experience of something like Call of Duty or Rainbow Six, but do it in a way where it rewards someone like me for thinking strategically and planning carefully, instead of being a good controller-jockey. So naturally, I was interested in a turn-based soccer game called Football, Tactics, and Glory (in fact, I've been following it for so long that I still just think of it as "Football Tactics"), which enthusiastically compared itself to XCOM. But for my money, the on-field play isn't satisfying either as a turn-based strategy game, or as a credible simulation of soccer. XCOM feels like authentically converting the feel of a realistic special forces raid or small-scale firefight into a turn-based framework (other than the aliens, of course). To me personally, FTG feels about as similar to a real-world sport as Blood Bowl or Dungeon Deathball. In FTG, you can have a turn where your goalkeeper passes the ball to the midfielder, who passes the ball to the forward, who scores a goal, without anyone else on the field taking a single step (and then you can do the exact same thing again the next time your goalie has the ball). I'm not claiming to be an expert in soccer, but what I do know and appreciate about it is that it's a game of constant motion, where large groups of players are persistently running, charging, passing, tackling, jockeying for position, trying to gain the upper hand. A game where you can do a couple passes and then score with no response from the other team (unless you move adjacent to a Central Defender, but that's easily avoided) just doesn't capture any of the things that I think make soccer special and exciting.

Why am I talking so much about a different game in my review of New Star Manager? Because that's what was on my mind when I started playing New Star. I spent a lot of time playing FTG despite my lack of appreciation for the execution of the on-field play. I still found the management stuff in between games to be pretty enjoyable, and I just didn't have any other option if I didn't want a game with hectic and chaotic real-time play. But I kept searching for other options, and eventually found New Star. This game strikes a balance between appealing to players like me who don't want to play FIFA, while still capturing the constant dynamic motion of real soccer, by making the on-field play pausable real time. The control is a little finicky, but I still like it a lot better than a fully real-time, constant fast-paced action type of game. The management aspect is maybe a little less realistic and engrossing than FTG (it's very card-based, including sometimes getting very good players in level-up booster packs that don't cost any money to sign), but I find the overall experience way more enjoyable than FTG. I have played many seasons of FTG, and have never once had a defender score a goal in that game. I don't even think it would be realistically possible unless you were building your whole team's strategy around that, and playing on a low difficulty level against a weaker team, and got really lucky. In New Star, it's not uncommon for defenders to score (or midfielders, who are a little more likely to score in FTG, but probably just if they have the Attacking Midfielder specialty).

Anyway, I guess my point is just that I think this game has much better on-field play than Football, Tactics, Glory, with a comparable management element (a nice "beer and pretzels" level of complexity, that doesn't bombard me with too many decisions). If anyone who reads this far knows of any other sports games that fit into a similar niche as this one, please let me know. The closest I could find to a sports management game with this level of complexity was Tennis Elbow Manager, and I don't know of any other sports games that have pausable real-time.

Would cautiously recommend this game on sale. The matches are quite fun, and the presentation is nice. However...

It's extremely grindy. Seasons are very long and mundane. Outside of the transfer window not much interesting happens. The "dilemmas" you face are frivolous. Press conferences and balancing player happiness feel like a chore. You waste a lot of time spamming the same cards at players/staff - a remnant from the p2w mobile game.

Players feel indistinguishable regardless of stats. They also don't improve from playing, aside from losing "rookie" status after 10 appearances. Player development is (again) a case of spamming training cards. It never really feels like your team is improving - just some numbers going up.

The difficulty is way too low - you'll win >90% of matches easily. (In my first season I won 36 in a row.) Most matches play out similarly, and you'll get to a point where you score with almost every chance. When you do mess up, you can spend your retry to practically guarantee a win.

They really need a harder difficulty setting. The ball should move faster and come from different angles during the shooting animation. As it is now you can hit a perfect shot almost every time. (Headers present a bit more challenge, but there's no reason to cross except to goof around.) Also there should be a quick-start so you can skip the lengthy tutorial.

This is my first review. If any game deserves one this is it.
This brings memories of Striker and Footballer of the Year on the Zx Spectrum.
A great take on a player management simulator. There's just enough stats to make business decisions but not too many that it's a spreadsheet nightmare.

I recommend this to anyone who wants a manager game that isn't as intense as the Football Manager series.

Oh and the random name generator can create some real Gems.