Introduction

I’ve played many, many seasons of Retro Bowl. It’s one of those rare games that are so simple on the surface but fantastically executed. It’s developed by New Star Games, and if you’ve ever played New Star Soccer you’ll understand why I was immediately interested. NSS is one of the best mobile games ever made, so this team definitely has pedigree. It’s not hard to see the similarities between the two.

Retro Bowl is a simplified American football game for mobile and web, with a Switch version coming out soon.

You manage a fictional NFL team and control offensive plays on the field as well as taking care of team management off the field. The gameplay on the field is about throwing precise passes or making running plays. Off the field, you must make good trades and upgrade facilities plus manage team and fan morale. The graphics style is intentionally pixelated, and very reminiscent of Tecmo Super Bowl (1991 NES).

Performance

Retro Bowl was released on mobile in Jan 2020 and achieved 150k-300k downloads per month until the second quarter of 2021 when its popularity started to die down. Starting in September 2021, videos of the game became popular on TikTok and it started to experience a large download spike with 6 million downloads during the October-November period.

Revenues have largely followed the download numbers, but do show some signs of sustaining beyond the initial days after downloading. Roughly $100k-$250k net per month between release and Q2 2021, then a total of $5.5m between October and December though it’s clear that this is unsustainable without large download numbers.

Competitors

In terms of American football games on mobile, Madden NFL is the only real competitor. There are other games that pull in a decent amount of downloads, but they’re all sub $30k per month in terms of revenue.

Madden is obviously the number one AAA American football game, so it pulls in quite a serious audience much like FIFA does. It seems to do between $2m-$5m per month, falling off after the start of the NFL season. Downloads follow a similar trend in the 500k-1m per month range.

Other possible points for comparison could be simple sports games on mobile. There are not a huge number of them in the top grossing charts. Head Ball 2 has done well globally for a while, and you could consider some of the football/baseball management games too. The closest matches are probably New Star Soccer, which is very old now, and Retro Goal. Retro Goal is the football equivalent of Retro Bowl, but it’s struggling to get any large number of downloads or revenue. Its player contract system is frustrating and doesn’t work as well as Retro Bowl’s does.

Match Gameplay

Gameplay consists of a series of offensive plays with 2 minute quarters by default. The gameplay is really enjoyable and it feels great to find the perfect pass and have your player run the distance to score a touchdown.

The Setup

On each play, you can see arrows showing where your players intend to run and you must read the defence to see what it makes sense to do. There is no time limit at this stage and the game begins with you controlling the QB (quarterback) as soon as you touch the screen. You have 3 options to begin:

1. Throw a pass by dragging on the screen to create a dotted arc of pass trajectory and power. As soon as you drag, the play will begin and players will start running their routes. Releasing your finger throws the ball along the arc you have dragged out. Time is limited here by the defence breaking through your linesmen and sacking (tackling) you.

2. Tap on your RB (running back) to hand off to them.

3. Throwing a pass “backwards” makes your QB start running with the ball.

If you don’t like the look of your play setup, you can use up one of a limited supply of audibles per game to randomly select another play. The number of audibles per game you get scales with QB player XP level.

All players have 4 attribute categories depending on their role that control how good they are at various aspects of their game, e.g. speed, catching, throwing accuracy, blocking.

Throwing an inaccurate pass runs the risk of missing your target (incomplete pass) or worse, an interception. Running with the ball risks a fumble if you collide head on with an opponent that could lead to a turnover.

The throwing gameplay can be quite funny as the ball will sometimes bounce off players or cause diving catches.

Running with the Ball

Once you have the ball in one of your players’ hands, you can swipe up or down to dodge up and down, swipe backwards to briefly pause and swipe forwards to make a dive forwards and ground the ball.

After Touchdown

Should you make a touchdown, you can choose to convert a 1 point kick or a 2 point play.

• 2 pointers behave exactly the same as a normal play.

• 1 pointers are a kicking minigame where you must tap twice to stop a moving needle on the highest power and best angle possible. Kicking is possibly too easy - you’ll rarely have any chance of missing unless you are a very long way out.

Minor Mechanics

When the clock is low at the end of a half and you are within range, you will be offered the chance to play the down or kick a goal. You may also be offered the chance to attempt an onside kick at the end of the game if you are down.

The final mechanic on offence is a timeout button. You get 2 timeouts per half and this can be used to stop the clock when your players are tackled to save you a precious few seconds to make more ground just before the end of a half. This mechanic feels a bit bolted on and doesn’t seem to offer much in terms of gameplay - you just need to keep an eye on the clock and remember to press timeout when you’re low on clock.

On Defence

Interestingly, the game does not feature playable defence at all. While your team is on defence, you get text commentary of what’s happening and the clock ticks down. The effectiveness of your defence is purely governed by your defensive players’ attributes vs your opponent’s offensive players’ attributes, with some randomness thrown in. Sometimes the game will call out an attribute challenge and which of your players was successful or unsuccessful (e.g. Johnson [DB] tried to make a tackle but was not strong enough!)

Core Loop

The core loop is simple:

1. Play match
2. Team development (training, upgrades, facility improvements, drafts, random events)

Metagame

Outside of the match gameplay, the game is based inside menus. From these, you can manage and improve your team.

The Season

You play match-by-match through a season of about 20 games, depending on how deep you make it into the playoffs. An entire season takes roughly 2 hours to finish in real time.

At the start of each season there is a draft where you can recruit new young talent. Things are kept simple here and by default you get 1 pick in each of the 3 draft rounds, though you can trade picks to/from other teams in return for contracted players. The draft is also a really nice mechanic wanting to make you play to the end of the current season as you know you will get some great new players at the start of your next season!

At the end of each season, you have the playoffs ending with the Retro Bowl final should you make it there.

Squad

You must recruit and maintain a team of up to 10 star players. The game automatically fills out the remaining players on your team in matches, and there is zero interaction with these extra players outside of matches.

You do start to develop a strong bond to your players over the course of the seasons, and find yourself having certain players that you are always aiming for in matches. The development and attachment reminded me of a Football Manager lite - the game encourages these bonds by recording records for your team in lots of categories, so you can look back on your players’ individual achievements.

Player Mechanics

• Each player has a current and potential rating of 0.5 stars - 5 stars.

• Each player has 4 attributes depending on their position that affect their in-game performance.

• Players earn XP from playing matches which allows you to choose one of their attributes to upgrade when they level up. These attributes can only be levelled up to the player’s potential maximum - and each attribute has its own potential maximum per player. (See bars in screenshot below.)

• Players have contracts that must be extended ahead of expiry or renewed upon expiry should you want to keep them.

  • Extend contract: Costs currency but retains the player for an extra year on their current salary. This feels expensive so you’ll tend to wait to renew contracts rather than paying…

  • Renew contract: FREE, but renewed players will always demand a higher salary - meaning your salary cap will have to stretch to accommodate. After 2-3 seasons, you will find yourself having a lot of pressure on your salary cap, and that increased salary cap purchase will start to look appealing to avoid dropping players you have become attached to.

• Individual player condition: Affects likelihood of injury and mistakes on field. Degrades from playing matches. Improved by resting players.

• Individual player morale: Low morale may lead to issues in-game and problems off the field. Improved generally by winning. Losing or playing poorly can reduce it.

• Players age up each year and retire when they get older.

• If you have more players than you need in a certain position, the best player will play. You can also bench players manually to sit them out for recovery. If you have no active star player in a position, then the game will fill that position with a generic player.

• There is a salary cap for your 10 star players that you must stay within.

There are 3 ways to source new players:

1. Sometimes you will randomly be offered a player or free agent in a trade.

2. You may buy free agents for your team using Coaching Credits (the game’s currency)

3. The draft at the beginning of each new season.

Staff

Aside from players, your team also has 2 staff roles: offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator. Hiring better coordinators increases your basic offence/defence rating and non-star players. However, firing an existing staff member affects player attitudes and harms the team morale. Some staff members have special traits that affect their unit (e.g. reduces chance of offensive players getting injured.)

Fan Sentiment and Squad Morale

Additionally, you have 2 team elements to balance to keep your team functional. These are affected by match results and dilemma/quiz choices that may appear randomly before/after matches. These elements to balance include the following:

• Fan sentiment: Too low and your job is in danger. Mainly changed by winning/losing games. This is especially important as it also affects how many credits you earn from winning games - this is a great free source of credits.

• Squad morale: Unclear what this affects. Changed by winning/losing games, plus having unhappy players in the squad does not help.

The Home Screen

From here you can see your next matches, your current standing, your team star ratings and your morale and fan sentiment ratings.

Roster Screen

Come to the Roster screen to inspect your current players and their attributes individually. You can tap into players to view more information and take various actions on them.

Viewing individual players allows you to bench them, view their data, set up a meeting to boost morale/condition/pay for level up/extend contract (all cost currency) or offer them out for a trade. Note that you can only have one meeting with an individual player per week.

It might be nice to have a feature that allows you to share your team portraits, achievements and some stats in an image for posting on social media.

Front Office Screen

In the front office, you can spend currency to upgrade various aspects of your franchise:

1. Stadium: Improves fan response to wins/losses
2. Training Facilities: Improves player XP gain
3. Rehab Facilities: Helps players recover condition faster and reduces injury risk

Staff are managed from here too by tapping on their portraits.

Additionally, you may increase your salary cap, look for free agents or find new staff hires. (These all cost currency.)

Economy and Monetisation

Retro Bowl’s economy is simple and very friendly to players.

Single Currency: Coaching Credits

The game only contains one currency: “Coaching Credits”, also abbreviated as “CC”. These are not essential to enjoy the game fully but do make things easier. They can be earned sparingly from gameplay or obtained via in-app purchases.

Sources

• Winning matches rewards 1-3 credits depending on your fan support level (0-33% = 1; 34-66% = 2; 67-100% = 3)
• Sometimes random decisions can reward a credit
• Maxed out players levelling up rewards a credit
• Winning the Retro Bowl earns 10 credits
• Skipping draft picks rewards 1-3 credits depending on draft round
• IAPs award a relatively large amount of credits for not much money

Sinks

• Purchasing free agents tends to cost 10-25 credits depending on quality
• Hiring staff costs 5-25 credits depending on quality
• Available free agent and staff lists can each be refreshed for 5 credits a pop
• Increase salary cap (100 credits!)
• Meeting with a player to improve morale (1 credit)
• Meeting with a player to boost condition (7 credits)
• Paying to level up a player manually (20 credits)
• Extending a player contract (variable but 10s of credits)
• Improving franchise facilities (scales according to current facility level)
• Extending staff contracts (variable according to rating but usually 10s of credits)

Monetisation

Monetisation is very toned down with low price points. The store offers an “Unlimited Version” non-consumable unlock for $0.99 plus a series of consumable currency purchases that go no higher than $10.

Credit Pricing

In terms of pricing, there is some increase in the number of credits you get per dollar as you go up the price tiers. Interestingly, the $5 price tier has the same value as the $10 price tier. Retro Bowl could definitely do more to highlight the savings here and encourage conversion at these higher price points, e.g. add an eye-catching banner to the description or discount percentage.

The one-off $1 unlimited version unlock also contains 25 credits, making it good value for money. The unlimited version also has a great unlock that is explained below. This seems like an obvious place to convert for the first time.

Credits	USD Price	Credits/USD (rounded)
25 (+ unlimited version)	$0.99	25
50	$1.99	25
100	$2.99	33
250	$4.99	50
500	$9.99	50

The $10 tier seems to have been introduced in a recent version as it was not present in older videos of the game I saw. Perhaps an effort to boost revenue after good uptake of the $5?

Unlimited Version

The unlimited version of the game is a one-time unlock that provides a few extra features in the Options menu - the biggest of which are the team editor and the roster size boost.

Weather: Causes weather conditions during the match. When kicking, there is wind to take into account, effectively making the game harder. Unclear if weather affects open play at all.

Roster Size: Allows you to toggle between a 10 man (standard) and 12 man roster. This allows you to get more star players, but will also put more pressure on your salary cap! To combat this, increasing your roster size to 12 man actually increases your salary cap from $150m to $200m - this is massive value and extremely useful. Remember you don’t necessarily need to use those 2 extra roster slots. Increasing the salary cap by $50m would usually cost 200 credits! (~$4!) It’s not explained anywhere to the player that this is such good value, and it’s not even explained that the increased roster size also boosts your salary cap!

Replays: When on, shows a replay in-game after your plays. Can be toggled between important plays only and all plays. Replays loop until skipped - perhaps to allow you to make a video capture of your great play?

Team Editor: The big one. Allows you to edit team names, uniforms, rosters, players and staff. Attributes can not be edited! Only names and visuals.

Another interesting thing to mention is that there are occasional upsell screens when starting a match asking if you want to upgrade to the unlimited version. Presumably these help players understand what is on offer and convert a few players.

Player Motivations for Buying Credits

In the early game, there is little motivation to spend beyond wanting to sign top free agents and staff. You generally don’t need to do this, as you can change the game difficulty in the settings menu! Meaning your team should never be too weak to win. By default, the difficulty is dynamic and scales according to your performances, but it’s very tempting to change to easy for a couple of games when you are losing for an easy fan sentiment and morale boost.

Later on in the game, contract renewals can back you into a wall by putting you up against your salary cap. This is quite a smart mechanic as you will become attached to these players and not want to let them go. It’s easy to see people converting here to increase their salary cap - this costs 100 credits (~$2) per $25m cap increase, which can get used up very quickly. The game does a couple of nice things to further encourage you to keep players on long term:

• Team and player records are recorded for you to view and reminisce over.

• One lovely touch is that your players who have won a Retro Bowl championship will be shown with championship rings on their portrait. This really makes it feel like they are part of your achievements.

You develop some further connection to players by the random events that appear before/after games telling you when they do good things or get in trouble off field.

Finally, you just get attached to players by seeing them win you matches, make great catches, perform amazing runs, etc.

Supporting a Small Developer

Another great point that many players online highlight is that because this game is the work of a small developer and isn’t predatory in terms of monetisation - they actually want to pay at least $1 to show their support! It really does come across as a friendly mobile game even for an audience of traditional gamers that usually would not go for free to play mobile games.

Many players draw a comparison between Retro Bowl and Madden or other AAA titles that cost $60, plus just how much time and enjoyment they have gotten out of this little game. There are lots of players who have played over a hundred seasons!

Ads

The game contains no ad monetisation but this could have been one way to profit further off the TikTok download spike. For example, allowing players to watch an ad to get some free credits each day or to boost your players’ XP gain rate temporarily. They could even have experimented with interstitial ads when matches begin/end, though this would have to be balanced with retention. Inserting ads could easily remove some of that indie dev feelgood factor.

There are actually interstitial cross promotion ads for the other games in the publisher’s portfolio (e.g. Retro Goal, New Star Soccer) that sometimes appear when going to the next match. These have no timeout and can be dismissed instantly.

Live Ops

Retro Bowl contains no live ops features! Obviously this keeps the game as light as possible from a dev perspective with no servers required, but it’s easy to imagine a few things that could be interesting:

Content Sales

• A discounted free agent with special abilities on offer each week for credits.
• Make players available directly for cash (targeted at certain players) e.g. $0.99 offer for a 5 star rookie.

Persistent Competition

• Simple leaderboards of the strongest and winningest teams in the world and in your region.
• Best records by category: longest pass, longest rushing TD, etc.
• PVP leagues

Events

• Challenge mode: special limited-time matches with strange conditions and scenarios to take on. Compete with other players on a leaderboard to see who can get the highest score. Get one try for free and pay credits for subsequent entries.
• PVP tournaments vs other player teams. Win 5 matches to earn a special player or staff member. You’re allowed 2 losses before you’re out but can pay for extra tries.

Summary

A great little game carried by the sheer fun of its match gameplay and the feeling of connection with your developing squad!

Monetisation is a slow burner, but the contract mechanics will start putting pressure on you to convert as you get into subsequent seasons and once you have started developing a sense of serious attachment to your players and team.

No server side or live ops. No ad monetisation. It certainly feels like there are opportunities here to encourage spending and add to the game’s longevity without damaging the charm.

Extremely replayable, just as New Star Soccer was. Gradual improvement over multiple seasons feels great - in a similar vein to Football Manager.

A very snackable mobile game. Addictive in terms of “just one more game” when you are on a run and making progress through the season towards the playoffs.