Strange Field Football

Genre: Sports (Soccer)

Players: 1-4 Team Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Strange Field Football is a Soccer game (or I suppose a Football game if you’re not from America) released on Nintendo Switch in 2021. This is a game that seems very much inspired by the Kunio-Kun extended franchise and its more combative approach to sports games.

As such, it won’t be surprising to learn that this game features a pixel art aesthetic with very simple-looking characters. There are occasional 3D elements here and there, but mostly this is designed as a retro experience. Likewise, the game uses a chiptune soundtrack and simple sound effects. It’s nothing that is in any way impressive, but it does a decent enough job hitting the nostalgia target it’s aiming for.

As for the gameplay, there’s a mostly good core experience here, with players having multiple options both to pass and shoot the ball when on offense, and to try to steal the ball when on defense. The game also avoids the (surprisingly common) issue of soccer games forcing players to swap players even when they don’t want to, allowing them to cycle through players on their team when using L, and giving them control when one of their players comes into possession of the ball, a good overall compromise that works well enough, though it still doesn’t make this feel like the team sport it’s really supposed to be, since everything is on you once you have the ball.

However, the real problems come into play when it comes to movement. Characters all have a combined health and stamina bar that drains when they receive a tackle or when players use the run button. This is easily abused, though – running until you’re a good distance ahead of the crowd won’t take up much stamina, and computer-controlled players seem largely disinclined to do the same. This means that as soon as you can get the ball, it just comes down to whether or not you can get it past the opponent’s goalie.

Another movement-centric issue is how painfully slow it is to move forward and back vertically on the field, something that takes far longer than horizontal movement. Now, that may be partly a perspective issue due to the tilted angle players see the field, but acknowledging this issue doesn’t mean I feel its effects any less.

There’s also far too little customization allowed here – players choose from one of eight pre-assembled teams, each with individual players who each have their own stats. However, you can’t trade these players out or assign them to positions. Not that it matters – once you’re on the field, they all seem largely interchangeable anyway.

It’s a shame that these issues drag down Strange Field Football, because there’s a core experience here that seems like it could be decent if it was worked on a bit more and had some more content and options. As it is, I think you’d be better off going with a different take on the sport in another game.

tl;dr – Strange Field Football is a 2D pixel art take on Soccer that seems inspired by the Kunio-Kun franchise, and while it gets some elements of the basic gameplay right, the game still runs into problems with movement and a lack of content and options. It’s not a terrible take on the sport, but you have better options out there.

Grade: C-

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