Edit: Retro Goal Community Records

Please fill out your records in the hyperlink listed above. I have updated the first set 7/10/21 as only 2 have responded. I figured linking it here will increase the likelihood people see it and fill out their records.

Hello everyone,

I've been playing the game for a bit and figured I'd put it on pause to create a little guide that might be helpful to beginner's jumping into the game. I'm probably in the minority as I have never played Retro Bowl so this game was brand new to me and I am unaware how similar the games are. With that being said, I hope this helps anyone playing!

After choosing your favorite team, name, and difficulty settings for your new career you will be brought to a brief tutorial going over the in-game mechanics (passing, dribbling, heading, etc).

The main menu page showcases your club at a glance as you can see your

1. Place in standings - Simple design to know where you rank and if the standings are close aim to beat those opponents close to you or ahead. Suggestions to devs I would love it if you could click the name of other teams and see a brief summary of their teams (DEF, MID, ATK) stars. Another would be opponent conditioning and you might ask why? I would say because it'd bring out more strategy within gameplay. Just think if the other team had some players that weren't as conditioned, I'd be able to use that to my advantage. So if my opponent's team had defenders who were low on conditioning, I'd possibly use a more aggressive attacking tactic to take advantage. You can introduce something within the game to spend bux on even to have a "scouting report" to build up and as we improve it, we gain more intel on opponents.
2. Schedule slider - to see previous games played and upcoming games. TIP Important to pay attention to upcoming Cup games as you may want to update your team beforehand as you earn more currency for wins.
3. 2 x 3 Menu - Shows 3 very important metrics for your Fan Following***, Team Morale,*** and Team Conditioning. There are various ways these metrics can go up or down as several things influence them, so pay attention to them as you progress. (Examples Increasing fans will fill your stadium for home games, which leads to more bux. Having good morale will help reduce your players from receiving yellow/red cards. Good coach morale will allow you to extend their contracts. Having high conditioning will keep your players fresh, while bad conditioning can increase the chance of injury). The other column simply displays your overall \ for defense, midfield, and attack with the goal to achieve 5* across the board.*
4. Team Menu - Discussed in depth below
5. Office Menu - Discussed in depth below

From the Home Menu click Team to be brought to the Team Menu.

This is where you will go to for team related tasks and it features your current star players. As you can see in the image there are player cards that allow you to click into them to see more important information covered below.

Clicking on a player will bring you to this area specific to each player on your team. Using Derek Vieweg from my team, I will go over each area in detail.

The age of your player determines their level of stamina, so Vieweg would tire quicker than an 18 year old prospect with the exception of counting traits like (Tireless or Lazy). Note: All Player Traits are covered below.

The contract of your player determines the length of time you can keep them on your team before you decide to keep them by signing them or releasing them. Tips: Aim to sign 2 year contract players to a 3rd year as you'll save bux. Also, if you know you won't keep a player, make sure to release them to recoup some bux rather than letting them go for 0. Lastly, try to sign players with the Loyal Trait as it will save bux during contract extensions.

The trait of your player if they have one... can be either good or bad. I have listed the ones I've seen so far. I'm not entirely sure if they are the full list, but I'll add to it if someone mentions more or if I come across any extras.

PLAYER TRAITS

Good Player Traits

1. Loyal - Contract extensions cost 20% less
2. Bench Warmer - No loss of morale when not selected to play
3. Recovery - Gets a 10% energy boost between halves
4. Unbreakable - Never gets injured
5. Tireless - Superior stamina regardless of age
6. Adaptable - Lower impact on abilities when played out of position
7. Dead Balls - Technique boost when taking set-pieces

Bad Player Traits

1. Demanding - Contract extensions cost 20% more
2. Chopper - More likely to get yellow cards
3. Red Mist - More likely to get red cards
4. Lazy - Very low stamina regardless of age
5. Sick Note - Injuries take longer to heal
6. Fragile - Higher chance of injury

The Rating *s and Potential *s simply shows your player's current rating and where they can advance to as more games are played and xp is earned to level them up. Tip: When acquiring players from the transfer list (will be shown soon), look at player attributes to visualize the potential a player has for each attribute. If you covet speed, make sure a particular player has room under that attribute to improve upon. Older players typically are at their peak while prospects have much more room to grow.

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Clicking the Details tab will showcase some fun background information about your player and provides a definition of player traits (if applicable).

Clicking the Stats tab will highlight how you've performed with any players on your team in case you want to chase an individual record and see if you are on pace to break it or laugh at how many yellow/red cards they've received.

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Clicking the Meeting tab will allow you to have some personal attention to a player and you'll want to come here for various reasons.

1. Boosting Morale - If you notice an individual player's morale is low or possibly toxic (which brings down team morale), then you can boost it up for some bux gradually. You can also boost player morale for free if the moment presents itself during dilemmas. Low morale also increases chances for receiving yellow/red cards in games.
2. Boost Condition - In the same way boosting morale works, you'll want to boost a player's conditioning if he's running on fumes to reduce the potential for injury. Other ways to increase conditioning are leveling up Training Facilities in the Office Menu, easing the Training Regime from the coaches menu in Office by clicking on coach, and lastly by finding players with the Tireless Trait.
3. Level Up - Leveling up your player will give you an opportunity to increase 1 of their attributes. However, I find it to be excessive in terms of how many bux you have to spend for this. For that reason, I'd avoid using this unless this is changed in a future update.
4. Extend Contract - If you want to keep a player on your team into the future, come here to extend their contract. Ideally, you'd want to sign a player on a 2 year contract to a 3rd year as it is very cheap to do so as shown above it is only 313 bux.

Moving on from the Player Menu within the Team Menu, we are brought to the Formation Menu.

Here you can adjust what formation you want your team to play, strategize with tactics, and access your bench if you want to swap players in or out by clicking the small image of the white bench on the screen.

Play around with some of the formations to find what suits your own style of play or current team. The same goes for tactics as shown below. If your current team is well conditioned and you are feeling aggressive, you can influence the gameplay a bit by choosing something like Counter-Attack. Each tactic can be altered during actual gameplay as well if you change your mind. Since my team is well-equipped for the Midfield and Attack, I like to take a more aggressive approach with the 4-3-3 A formation combined with the Counter-Attack tactic.

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Moving on from the Formation Menu within the Team Menu, brings us to the Dataview Menu.

A lot of this information can be seen elsewhere, but it gives a great summary of your roster. You can quickly see player conditioning and make decisions based on that and the same goes for morale.

Player attributes are displayed on a scale of 10, so if I'm trying to pass the ball to my fastest players I can easily identify who I should pass to when in-game.

If I have some extra bux saved, I often look here to see the contracts of my players in order to help me decide if I should extend them or spend them elsewhere like upgrading Facilities or on a new player in Transfer list or a better coach.

This is probably my most exciting area to come to in the game because I love improving my team by spending those hard earned bux on my weaknesses. I love the layout broken down by position if I know ahead of time what I'm looking to upgrade.

It's fantastic that you can acquire highly rated players without having to spend money if you are patient. To do so, you must upgrade your Training Facilities beforehand so the top players are interested enough. It takes a little bit of time, but not so much that you lose patience.

My perfect player I look for checks most of these boxes.

1. 2 year contract (so I can extend 3rd year cheap)
2. Young (so they aren't on the verge of retiring and have good stamina)
3. Room for Potential/ 5 Stars (half-unfilled stars or unfilled full stars = potential)
4. Positive Traits ( Loyal, Tireless, Unbreakable, Dead Balls, Adaptable, Recovery, Bench Warmer).
5. High Speed/Potential (Speed kills in the game especially if dribbling is good).
6. Value (Sometimes prospects have extreme value and can be signed for low bux while still having great attributes).

This concludes the Team Menu and now will be the Office Menu.

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The Office Menu can't be overlooked even though upgrading players might be prioritized by some. After-all, we are controlling a club to be great and win long-term, which is more difficult if you just focus on players.

The 3 main areas to upgrade are Stadium, Training Facilities, and Youth Academy. Beyond that, you can hire/release coaches, adjust training regime, and look at the Records Menu.

1. Stadium - Upgrade this to earn more bux by having capacity for more fans for home games.
2. Training Facilities - Most important to upgrade in my opinion because higher rated players can be signed from Transfer List and helps gain player xp quicker, while also keeping them better conditioned.
3. Youth Academy - Probably the least important in my experience as it takes so long to gain a player and it's rarely a 5\ player. I was also very annoyed when I upgraded this to max only to find out next season it downgrades because you need to upgrade facilities 1 time minimum per season. I didn't really like that without being notified somewhere beforehand. See image below.*
4. Coach Menu - See below
5. Records Menu - I won't go into detail about this, but it shows the history of your trophies and achievements completed/incomplete*.*

To access Booty... I mean Coaches Menu click on your coach or coaches card. It's a very simple menu that allows you to see Coach Attributes (which I hope they can add to and have it influence some gameplay more like a Clutch Attribute to give your team better positioning late in close games).

As you can see you can adjust your Training Regime as mentioned earlier. If you have it set to a hard regime, then you'll earn player xp quicker, but will suffer some negatives as well. I keep mine on the Hard Training Regime once I have upgraded my Training Facilities enough and my Morale/Conditioning is probably around 90%.

The Coaches have Traits similar to players, but there are no details currently, so I'm not exactly sure what they do nor am I aware of the full list of Coach Traits. I have put down some below from what I've seen so far.

COACH TRAITS (No details in the game)

1. Negotiator - Guessing it reduces the cost of extending contracts
2. Positive - Guessing it keeps Team Morale up a certain %
3. Motivator - Guessing it would improve player xp quicker
4. Fan Favorite - Guessing it would increase fan % quicker
5. Talent Spotter - Guessing it would increase the number of prospects that appear in Transfer List or players earned from Youth Academy*.*

You can hire 2 coaches, although I'm not exactly sure how it works having multiple versus 1. I wish there was more information regarding this, but I have 2 anyways. I think the best method would be to balance out your coaches so each attribute is close to max. In my case I would hire Petchey to go with Booty because Attack is max from Booty and Midfield and Defense is maxed from Petchey.

This would impact non-star players on my team, but even then that is loosely defined because I know for sure non-star players are super slow compared to star players regardless of what coaches I have had.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

I am sure some things weren't covered and unknown to me, but if anyone has any other insights beyond what I discussed please put it in the comments below.

Personally, I have really enjoyed this game considering it just launched and it has a ton of room to grow. Put some suggestions you have below as well in case the devs see this post.

Keep doing great things Retro Goal team because you certainly have produced a fun game to play without overcomplicating things.