Developer: New Star Games, Ltd.
Publisher: FiveAcesPublishing
Release date: February 10, 2022
Available on: Nintendo Switch (reviewed), Mobile, PC (web)
With the big game right around the corner, it’s the perfect time to show support to your local non-trademarked football club. That’s right, we’re talking about the Retro Bowl! How soon is it happening? Well, probably in just a few hours.
Retro Bowl, developed by New Star Games, is a throwback (a backwards lateral, if you will) to the old school football games of the late 80s. The graphics and audio will immediately transport you back in time. The game itself plays like a modern mobile game, which makes sense as this was originally a release for Android and iOS phones. This iteration improves on the mobile release by adding in some new features and controller support.
When I played Retro Bowl on the Switch, I primarily stuck to using a controller. The touch screen controls are fantastic, and I do recommend them for anyone playing on a phone, but the controller adds something special. Choosing to hand the ball off, pass it, or run it yourself as the QB, your goal is obviously to score more points than your opponent. Kicking for field goals and extra points are there too. What isn’t there is the entire defensive portion of the sport. When you play, you’re playing offense only. The computer takes care of everything when you’re playing defense, and that’s summed up with on screen text. It helps to move the games along quickly, which is nice, but it would be nicer to have an option to at least choose to watch the other team play offense, even if you still can’t do anything during those times.
Aside from actually playing the sport ball game, there is a nice little team management aspect of the game. You can hire an Offensive Coordinator and Defensive Coordinator, each of which may or may not have special traits to help you slightly in different aspects of the game. There are facilities to upgrade to enhance your players and boost their recovery. And of course, there’s the team. Each “year” in game you’ll start the season with a draft. Additional draft picks can be acquired by trading away players you don’t want. Finished your draft and still have space left on the team? You can hire Free Agents, at the cost of Coaching points. Be mindful of your salary cap, though!
Overall, Retro Bowl is one of those easily digestible games that lends itself to being played for 10 minutes, or two hours. A whole season of games can be completed in just a few hours, and once that happens, depending on how well your team did that season, you may find yourself wanting to move on to a new team to manage. Or maybe you’re happy to stick with your current team and keep building them up to be an even more formidable team for the next season.
A nice little feature to the game is the Dynamic Difficulty. Sure, you could choose Easy, Medium, Difficult, or even Extreme, but the Dynamic Difficulty setting is supposed to boost the difficulty of your opponents dynamically, which keeps it from being too hard or too easy. It should keep the game at a constant state of “I can do this, but it’s going to be tough.”
Pros
- Matches last only a few minutes, leading to easily digestible chunks of gameplay.
- Team management, especially when the draft comes around, is fun.
- The controls, whether touchscreen or controller, are extremely easy to use.
Cons
- Interceptions. I swear to freaking God….
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