I was recently on Steam looking for games that were in the Game Dev genre since I’ve really had a blast with those kind of games. One game that caught my eye was a recently released game called Pro Gamer Manager. Judging by the pictures it reminded me a lot of Game Dev Tycoon in the way that the camera was set. After reading a description of the game I said to myself “I’m very curious to see how this game plays!” I started to wonder if the game would instantly take me in like Game Dev Tycoon did when I first played it. At the very least it could be like my experience with GamersGoMakers in the sense that I hated it at first, but after figuring out the options and controls having a blast with it. So how well have I enjoyed Pro Gamer Manager? Well let’s just say that the day I downloaded it I spent 7 hours playing it.
In Pro Gamer Manager you play as a random gamer who plays a game called FOBA (Which is basically a MOBA like League of Legends or DOTA) and the goal is to get big enough where you can move out of your bedroom, start a FOBA Team, and climb the ranks until you become the Champions in the Pro League. You start with 0 credits, EP, and Fans. You gain experience in the game by watching other streamers, and by playing FOBA itself. As you do these you gain EP, you can spend it to learn a role, learn a specialty, and to Stream. These of course are only at the beginning and as the game progresses you get many other options. You can only move out of your bedroom when you get 10,000 Credits and 500 fans. After you do that, you move into your own Gaming House and have to hire other gamers to join your team and compete in the Amateur Leagues. In the Amateur leagues there are 8 teams. The top 2 teams get promoted to the next League while the bottom team gets demoted.
Let me just say that you will more than likely fail during your first playthrough. I had to restart the game 4 times until I successfully made it. The problem I ended up facing was generating money after I started my team. Despite that you can gain money through sponsorships, eShops, and placing in the top 3. This caused me to have several problems since I had to pay a person who works for my team to go out and recruit players. This lead me to pay around $10,000 to recruit just one team member who had a rating above 75. The developers have since noted that they will be adding a feature that will allow you to negotiate team members when recruiting them.
The one thing that players will probably notice very quickly is that there is a Talent option, but they are blank and just says ‘Coming Soon’. This game is just on Steam’s Early Access, and this actually is my very first game I’ve ever played that has been on Early Access. It feels like 90% of the game is actually done and that the remaining 10% is just the talents as well as some minor adjustments. The 2 big things that bothered me the most was there is no Options Menu. Whenever you push the ESC button, it just lets asks if you want to save, load, or quit the game. There aren’t any options to adjust the sound, or to change the resolutions at all. The other thing that really bugged me was that I got all the way to Amateur League 1, which is the last Amateur class before the Pro Leagues and it wouldn’t let me start the season. It just stops letting you progress after Day 268. This is most likely due to it still being in Early Access, but I just wish it would’ve given me a notice that it wasn’t going to go any further.
Overall, I can say that I really enjoyed it. The developers have stated that they plan on adding many more features like the ability to buy, sell, and trade players between teams, improving contract negotiations, and of course lots and lots of upgrades. It will be very interesting to see what the future holds for the folks over at RaptorClaw Games and just how much content they plan on adding will affect the game.
