Here’s another non-Football Manager football manager game review… because apparently that’s all I write about on here anymore!
Ah, but I’ve been wanting to check this title out for a while now. If you’re fed up of ultra-realistic simulations with less soul than a Reform UK party conference, or AAA games that turn your kids into broke gambling addicts, you’ll probably find this just as refreshing as I did.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. This is Bang Average Football.
BACKGROUND
Bang Average Football is predominantly the work of one man. Ruairi Dorrity (aka ruairi dx) is a British software engineer based in San Francisco, who began working on the game in late 2021 as a passion project. If you want to learn more about his back story, it’s definitely worth checking out the interview he did with the brilliant FM Show podcast last year.
The storyline and art style are clearly inspired by ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley – the cozy farm simulation game that became a critical and commercial sensation after its release in 2016. The game has sold over 50 million copies and garnered a huge following of devoted fans – including the singer-songwriter Soccer Mommy, of whom this correspondent is a big fan (and not just ‘cos of her stage name).
In terms of the football aspects, the inevitable comparisons are with the Sensible Soccer series – specifically Sensible World of Soccer. Its 8-bit graphics, bird’s-eye viewpoint and simple gameplay have inspired scores of imitators such as Championship Soccer… but no Soccer Mommy videos. Yet. To be honest, I’m not sure she even likes soccer.
Anyway, enough distractions. Let’s get back on topic.
BAF was released on Windows, Mac, Linux and Steam Deck in May 2024. After getting positive reviews and regular updates over its first year or so, ruairi dx announced in September 2025 that he had secured a publishing deal with UK-based indie publishers Secret Mode. Incidentally, Secret Mode will be releasing a retro football management game called NUTMEG! later this month, so keep your eyes peeled for a future Fuller FM review of that.
STARTING OUT
The story is the ‘bread and butter’ of Bang Average Football. Before diving straight in, though, I would recommend you play a few quick matches to get used to the controls. If you’ve played Sensi or other similar games before, you should be able to adjust pretty quickly.
When you’re ready to begin the story, you’ll first be asked to create your character, set the difficulty level, and decide whether you want to play with men’s or women’s players. Later on, you’ll get to name your club and select the kits they’ll play in. If you ever change your mind, you can always rename your club or redesign the kits at any time.
The story begins in the distant past, when your chosen club has the opportunity to win the league championship… until the team captain misses a penalty in the final minute. Who knows what happened to them afterwards? Maybe they went to live in a caravan like Wayne Rooney?
Decades later, you arrive in the town ready to sign for your new club, which is now stranded at the bottom of the third division. Then the team coach greets you at the train station with a bombshell – the manager has bailed out at the last minute, and you’ve been chosen to be the new player/manager. Oh yeah, and the first match of the season is literally about to kick off! [Gulp]
After you play your first match, you will be able to explore the town. The team’s fans and chairman will gather down the pub, stadium improvements can be discussed at the mayor’s office, and you can then take a casual stroll down the beach. You even have your own house, where you can… er… flush the toilet, I guess.
For obvious reasons, I won’t reveal any major story spoilers beyond the first few matches. Instead, I will discuss my general views about the game – for better and worse.
WHAT I LIKED
The match engine is terrifically chaotic, in a good way. The controls are basic and pretty easy to grasp, but don’t expect your team of miscellaneous cloggers to play like 2010s Barcelona. As the name suggests, Bang Average Football produces bang-average football – fast-paced, end-to-end, thud-and-blunder mayhem.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve wanted to hurl my keyboard at the wall after my player put a stray pass into touch or missed a gilt-edged chance. But I’ve also revelled in my players chaotically sliding in on opponents and picking up yellow cards, like I’m a 9-year-old playing World Cup 98 after school. It’s been a long time since a new game has rekindled that love of football, back when teams weren’t full of overcoached robots.
The art style is very appealing and easy on the eye. It harks back not just to Stardew Valley but also to old-school Pokémon titles on Game Boy, while still looking like a video game that could conceivably have been made within the last decade.
There’s also a very cool quality-of-life feature. You can save goals as GIF images, so you can share your greatest moments with your friends – or just get a few more laughs out of your opponents’ incompetence.
Most of all, I love the simplicity. You don’t need to worry about false nines or offside traps or rest defences. You just select 11 players, set formations for when you’re in and out of possession, and then you’re ready to play.
Of course, you do have to do a bit more than just set up a tactic and play matches. You are gradually introduced to other features like stadium building, sponsorship deals and transfers as you play through the story. I find it refreshing when a game takes this approach rather than overwhelming you with everything all at once.
You can also improve your player/manager’s skills by doing training skills and completing challenges. Mind you, there were a few times when I Alt + F4’d out the game in frustration after trying to score a free-kick to earn an extra stat point.
Of course, that didn’t stop me from coming back a few minutes later to do it all again. It’s addictive. What else can I say?
WHAT I DIDN’T
There is no mouse support for Bang Average Football. Everything is done from the keyboard – playing through the game and navigating through menus. That’s fine and all, and it’s easy enough to reconfigure the key bindings to a setup I used on the old FIFA games… but using the ‘Z’ key as the main action key rather than ‘Return’ or the Space bar isn’t exactly intuitive.
Then again, BAF highly recommends using a controller rather than a keyboard when playing the game. I know that, because it keeps reminding me every time I boot up the game! I’ll just say that this suggestion really sticks in my craw now that I’ve experienced Football Manager 26.
In terms of the game itself, the design choice to stop the match clock whenever the ball goes out of play AND still include injury time is… odd. It’s not unusual for a half of (bang-average) football to overrun by anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes – and you can theoretically extend this time indefinitely just by keeping the ball in your final third. In one match, I managed to keep the clock running for a whopping 82 minutes – and that was just the first half!
One thing that really frustrated me early on was the difficulty spike. On Easy mode, I could pretty much walk the ball into the opponents’ net unchallenged… but if I replayed the match and cranked the difficulty up to Medium, I could barely string two passes together or keep the ball for very long. Maybe that’s ‘cos I’m old and my reactions aren’t what they used to be, but I wish there was more of a middle ground.
Also, there are times when the game’s simplicity can leave it feeling a little hollow. Because players don’t get tired or injured, and there are no suspensions (luckily, for my team of red-card addicts), substitutions are essentially pointless and you can easily play the same XI every week without needing to change. Indeed, once you discover transfers, you can get away with having only 14 players in your squad – 11 starters, and three subs for any tactical tweaks.
WE MUST TALK ABOUT…
The story. (Still no major spoilers here, don’t worry.)
The main goal of BAF’s story is to get your team promoted from the third and second divisions, and then ultimately win the top league. With eight teams in each league, this can be achieved in as few as 42 matches across three seasons (excluding cup games) if you know what you’re doing. I… ahem… needed three seasons just to get out of the bottom league.
Anyway, the non-stop football is occasionally broken up by various missions, which you can play through largely at your own pace. The first few missions take place in your town, but you’ll later be asked to travel to another town and solve a silly problem. At least one of these is clearly based on a strange-but-true tale from about 60 years ago.
The storylines are full of whimsical British humour, which poke some light-hearted fun at modern football – whether it’s fan tribalism or overly complicated tactics. It’s incredibly endearing, even if some of the underdog clichés do get a bit much at times.
SUMMARY
Bang Average Football is not bang-average at all. Aside from the odd rage-quit moment or the occasional lag in performance, it is a real joy to play. For me, it has just the right mix of charm, humour, nostalgia and – of course – football.
I’m not sure how much replayability it has once you’ve finished the story, but its chaotic ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ gameplay should keep you hooked for some time. If you enjoy retro football games mixed with wholesome storytelling, this is absolutely worth picking up on Steam or Epic for about a tenner.
FULLER FM RATING: 4* – Premier League.
And that’s a wrap for my latest Fuller FM review. If you enjoyed reading it and want to share your own thoughts about Bang Average Football, please feel free to leave a comment below – or message me on Threads or Bluesky.
I might get back to writing about Football Manager if it ever gets good again. Until then, though, I think I’m gonna sink a few more hours into this nostalgia trip…
Fuller FM 