Retro Goal Review

A well crafted retro soccer bonanza

Summary

Retro Goal is a game developed by New Star Games. They are a small developer that previously released the super awesome Retro Bowl. I loved that game so I was super excited to give this one a try. Retro Bowl was made in an old school 80s style and had some very nice game play innovations that made it a great fit for mobile. Retro Goal is also in retro style although this time it is the 90s and instead of controlling an American football franchise you get a premier league team to manage.

If you played Retro Bowl then Retro Goal is going to feel very familiar. The team management is very similar. You have five or so star players that are the ones you need to worry about keeping happy and conditioned properly. You have two coaches that you can hire that will dictate how the non star players play and then you have various items that can be upgraded to help your team. You have the stadium which as you upgrade will allow larger ticket sales (assuming you are winning of course). You have the facilities which as you upgrade will keep your players better conditioned, Finally, you have the youth academy which upgraded allows better young players to join the team. Within the youth academy there are two facets, the quality of player that graduates from the academy and the time it takes a player to graduate. Upgrading the academy appears to increase the quality of the players but does not necessarily make them graduate more quickly.

As in Retro Bowl these items work together well in this game. It is significantly harder though to upgrade your players and reach five star status in Retro Goal than it was in Retro Bowl. I felt like in Retro Bowl you could get there reasonably quickly to have a championship caliber team. It probably only took two or maybe three seasons to be able to reach the championship. In Retro Goal though it take a while of slogging through to pull your team into the top three of the Premier League and even then your team is probably well under skill of the Man Cities and Chelseas of the game. In this sense I suppose it is more like the real life Premier League where the haves have it all and the have nots well… don’t. Even saving up for several seasons I still can’t seem to afford more than maybe one five star player and that would then sacrifice the rest of the team by signing them.

Game Play

As for the game play here it is slightly less polished than Retro Bowl but still a lot of fun. It took a while to get used to the swipe to move and pull back to pass or shoot. Even now there seem to be times when the game is confused about what I am trying to do and shoots when I wanted to change the direction of the player but this is fairly rare and given that it is a mobile game compromises obviously had to be made. Overall the game play is fun I just don’t think soccer lends itself to control schemes on mobile as well as football does. Still it is admirable how well they have thought through the game paly mechanics given the challenges of mobile.

Monetization

As far as monetization on this game there are not many ads which is nice. Actually, I haven’t seen any ads so I don’t believe they exist in this game. You have to pay $0.99 after playing ten matches if you want to keep going for the season. This seems completely reasonable to me. You can also pay for certain premium players. They typically have the best stats. It is an interesting way to monetize. I think I would have preferred to see something like being able to pay to coach some of the better teams or to get certain uniforms or something of the like instead of better players but you certainly don’t have to pay for them – although I it would make you life much easier in the end.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Retro Goal is a great follow up to Retro Bowl. If you enjoyed Retro Bowl I think you will also like this one a lot. The game play is a lot of fun, the graphics give that cool 90s vibe and the monetization scheme isn’t over the top or annoying. Overall, I would rate it slightly lower than Retro Bowl – mostly because the control scheme doesn’t work quite as well for soccer as it does for football – but that is not really a knock on the game. Retro Bowl is one of the best sports games on mobile. This one is still a strong recommend and one we will be playing for a while.

Why should you trust us?

This is a great question. Of course anybody can write reviews online but we do think our opinion is worth something since for one we have been gaming a long time – like a really long time. We only post reviews of games that we have taken our time on and only recommend games that we really enjoy. The standard is if it would stay on our home screen to just play for fun then it is recommended. Finally, we are game developers ourselves so we bring a bit of insight on how these games are made and respect the hard work dedication and time it takes to make a well crafted game.