⏰ In a rush? Don't worry, I gotchu'! ⏰
What Works:
✅ Nostalgic Graphics: Football Game features graphics reminiscent of early 90s point-and-click games, appealing to fans of retro aesthetics.
✅ Traditional Puzzles: The game offers classic point-and-click puzzles that provide a sense of nostalgia and logical challenge.
What Doesn't:
❌ Weak Narrative: The story is simplistic, featuring shallow dialogue and a confusing climax. Interactions with secondary characters are merely narrative devices for puzzle-solving, lacking depth and engagement.
❌ Unappealing Art Style: The archaic graphics, particularly the giant floating heads used for dialogue, are more off-putting than charming.
❌ Misleading Title: Despite its name, Football Game has little to do with American football, which is neither central to the plot nor significantly relevant to the narrative.
❌ Short Gameplay: With only one or two hours of gameplay, the game quickly exhausts its content, offering little replay value.
❌ Lack of Achievements: On the Nintendo Switch, the game lacks an achievement system, diminishing its appeal for fans of Ratalaika’s typical offerings.
👟 Tommy's Quest in Football Game
Beautiful and dramatic are high school crushes. After all, under the spell of this adolescent curse, one finds themselves capable of accomplishing many things, some perhaps more questionable than others. Tommy is the star of Ratalaika’s Football Game, and he’s ready to meet the girl of his dreams no matter the cost.
🕹️ A Nostalgic Nod to 90’s Point-and-Click Adventures
The narrative combines with a small nostalgic bang, derived from graphics that recall the point-and-click games of the early 90’s, as well as the traditional puzzles of its genre. However, none of these aspects surprise at the end of the day, culminating in a package cheaper than many McDonald's or Burger King dollar meals. The story, for instance, forces Tommy to interact with secondary characters of relative interest, who are merely narrative devices to fulfil simplistic and logical puzzles Tommy needs to solve on his aforementioned quest. In terms of writing, the dialogue is shallow and simple, where the climax proves to be confusing. The artistic department, archaic and old, looks like it’s been hit by a truck, revealing itself to be more frightening than charming, especially since all dialogue is conveyed by giant floating heads.
❓ Why Football Game? The Unsolved Mystery
There is, however, a question that needs to be asked: why Football Game?. This may be the hardest puzzle to solve, as little to none of the story covers American football. Tommy once played on the main team, the Turbines, but now is not even a substitute. The meeting place for the couple is near the stadium where an important game is taking place, but this is hardly relevant to neither the narrative nor the plot. It seems that, in the end, one more puzzle remains unsolved...
🚫 A Title Not Worth the Price
After one or two hours of gameplay, Football Game showed everything it had up its sleeve. A simplistic story with weak writing, as well as graphics highly reminiscent of the 90’s. The puzzles are too logical and are tied to uninteresting characters. Thus, it is concluded that there is no reason to spend money on Football Game on the Nintendo Switch, especially since there isn’t even an achievement system to take advantage of as fans of Ratalaika’s video games know well.
🌟 M I S C 🌟
◻️ 🌳 Visit my Linktree for more content.
◻️ ⚠️ Review originally written for FNintendo (defunct website) and published on January 15th, 2020.
◻️ 🙋♂️ Explore more reviews written by me.
◻️ 🎮 Discover Nintendo Switch video games I've played.
◻️ ✍️ Reviewed in European Portuguese.
◻️ 📜 Review Number 016
✨ F I N ✨
What Works:
✅ Nostalgic Graphics: Football Game features graphics reminiscent of early 90s point-and-click games, appealing to fans of retro aesthetics.
✅ Traditional Puzzles: The game offers classic point-and-click puzzles that provide a sense of nostalgia and logical challenge.
What Doesn't:
❌ Weak Narrative: The story is simplistic, featuring shallow dialogue and a confusing climax. Interactions with secondary characters are merely narrative devices for puzzle-solving, lacking depth and engagement.
❌ Unappealing Art Style: The archaic graphics, particularly the giant floating heads used for dialogue, are more off-putting than charming.
❌ Misleading Title: Despite its name, Football Game has little to do with American football, which is neither central to the plot nor significantly relevant to the narrative.
❌ Short Gameplay: With only one or two hours of gameplay, the game quickly exhausts its content, offering little replay value.
❌ Lack of Achievements: On the Nintendo Switch, the game lacks an achievement system, diminishing its appeal for fans of Ratalaika’s typical offerings.
👟 Tommy's Quest in Football Game
Beautiful and dramatic are high school crushes. After all, under the spell of this adolescent curse, one finds themselves capable of accomplishing many things, some perhaps more questionable than others. Tommy is the star of Ratalaika’s Football Game, and he’s ready to meet the girl of his dreams no matter the cost.
🕹️ A Nostalgic Nod to 90’s Point-and-Click Adventures
The narrative combines with a small nostalgic bang, derived from graphics that recall the point-and-click games of the early 90’s, as well as the traditional puzzles of its genre. However, none of these aspects surprise at the end of the day, culminating in a package cheaper than many McDonald's or Burger King dollar meals. The story, for instance, forces Tommy to interact with secondary characters of relative interest, who are merely narrative devices to fulfil simplistic and logical puzzles Tommy needs to solve on his aforementioned quest. In terms of writing, the dialogue is shallow and simple, where the climax proves to be confusing. The artistic department, archaic and old, looks like it’s been hit by a truck, revealing itself to be more frightening than charming, especially since all dialogue is conveyed by giant floating heads.
❓ Why Football Game? The Unsolved Mystery
There is, however, a question that needs to be asked: why Football Game?. This may be the hardest puzzle to solve, as little to none of the story covers American football. Tommy once played on the main team, the Turbines, but now is not even a substitute. The meeting place for the couple is near the stadium where an important game is taking place, but this is hardly relevant to neither the narrative nor the plot. It seems that, in the end, one more puzzle remains unsolved...
🚫 A Title Not Worth the Price
After one or two hours of gameplay, Football Game showed everything it had up its sleeve. A simplistic story with weak writing, as well as graphics highly reminiscent of the 90’s. The puzzles are too logical and are tied to uninteresting characters. Thus, it is concluded that there is no reason to spend money on Football Game on the Nintendo Switch, especially since there isn’t even an achievement system to take advantage of as fans of Ratalaika’s video games know well.
🌟 M I S C 🌟
◻️ 🌳 Visit my Linktree for more content.
◻️ ⚠️ Review originally written for FNintendo (defunct website) and published on January 15th, 2020.
◻️ 🙋♂️ Explore more reviews written by me.
◻️ 🎮 Discover Nintendo Switch video games I've played.
◻️ ✍️ Reviewed in European Portuguese.
◻️ 📜 Review Number 016
✨ F I N ✨
Not a lot to do here, story's starts promising but ends very rapidly
Stinky Platinum obtained in 2 hours. Use a guide for collectables. A weird story that is a little entertaining for a Stinky Platinum.
I went into Football Game not really knowing what to expect, and tbh what I played wasn't bad.
You play as Tommy in a small town in the 80s, it's game night at the local football arena and you're looking for your high school sweetheart. The athmosphere of the game feels off from the beginning and that's where you start to realize that something else is going on. Something more sad and depressing...
Gameplay-wise it's a simple point n click, easy to figure out and not very complex in how it handles objects and actions. The soundtrack is definitely great and it's really neat that they got original songs for it. Graphically the game is on the low pixel end, but with that said it's not bad. As a matter of fact, it fits perfect for the potrayal of the game.
It's an interesting game and is recommended for the player who enjoys more experimental point n click titles.
You play as Tommy in a small town in the 80s, it's game night at the local football arena and you're looking for your high school sweetheart. The athmosphere of the game feels off from the beginning and that's where you start to realize that something else is going on. Something more sad and depressing...
Gameplay-wise it's a simple point n click, easy to figure out and not very complex in how it handles objects and actions. The soundtrack is definitely great and it's really neat that they got original songs for it. Graphically the game is on the low pixel end, but with that said it's not bad. As a matter of fact, it fits perfect for the potrayal of the game.
It's an interesting game and is recommended for the player who enjoys more experimental point n click titles.
Started nice, ended with the basic story ever
This review contains spoilers
I'd been meaning to check out more of Cloak and Daggers' games after liking The Excavation of Hob's Barrow so much last year, and finally got around to giving "Football Game" a go.
The atmosphere and music were cool, but most everything else fell a bit short. It unfortunately managed to feel slowly paced, despite only being a bit over an hour long. The puzzles were mostly ok, but just not that interesting. The majority of the game was spent finding a way to leave your house and then doing some errands for high schoolers. The narrative was of the 'purposefully vague so you can go back and piece things together' variety, but it just didn't quite work for me here. I needed a bit more to make me care about Football Game -- adding in some extra dialogue to build up the characters and fill out the plot just a bit more would have gone a long way.
At the end of the day, it just felt a little underbaked. Not bad enough to dissuade me from checking out Cloak and Daggers other games, but not really worth the hour either.
The atmosphere and music were cool, but most everything else fell a bit short. It unfortunately managed to feel slowly paced, despite only being a bit over an hour long. The puzzles were mostly ok, but just not that interesting. The majority of the game was spent finding a way to leave your house and then doing some errands for high schoolers. The narrative was of the 'purposefully vague so you can go back and piece things together' variety, but it just didn't quite work for me here. I needed a bit more to make me care about Football Game -- adding in some extra dialogue to build up the characters and fill out the plot just a bit more would have gone a long way.
At the end of the day, it just felt a little underbaked. Not bad enough to dissuade me from checking out Cloak and Daggers other games, but not really worth the hour either.
Pretty basic adventure game. Brevity works in its favour.
Grandiosa idea entorpecida (un poco) por una ejecución "Justita". Curiosamente aunque el grueso del juego es tomarte por puto recadero, no se alarga ni un minuto y, honestamente, resulta agradable ver un juego que sabe cuándo acabar.