Teamfight Manager Reviews

Me

Very fun game

if the sequel isnt good ill kill myself

[h3] Teamfight Manager is a fun little game that captures a lot of fantasy, but is ultimately rendered obsolete by other games that have stepped into the space. 2.5/5 [/h3] [i] On my scale, a 2.5 game deserves a mixed rating. If it is graded 2.5 and recommended, it leans more towards being good, satisfying, and fun, but with severe limitations that you should consider before committing to a purchase. [/i] I like this game, and I’ve had a ton of fun playing it. I am recommending it to specifically say “Hey, I enjoyed this, and I want this developer to succeed.” However, I do not recommend you buy this game unless you are an e-sports fiend. The primary reason for this is twofold: 1) Esports Godfather is a 5/5 superior game that just blows this out of the water, and 2) Teamfight Manager 2 is slated to release in early access later this year, and, while I am skeptical it will work, [i] it looks really cool. [/i] Teamfight Manager is a cute game. It helped Team Samoyed get off their feet, and I think they did a really good job at capturing the core fantasy. I miss the original version of the teams where they were parodies of the (at the time) famous League teams from around the world—unfortunately, someone threatened a lawsuit and forced them to replace the teams with boring generic names, but I modded the original back in for my own copy. It is a superior experience (look up how to do it). The music is cutesy and the pixel art is charming and very well done. The mechanics of the Arena deathmatch MOBA they designed for the game are very simple and interesting, although it feels entirely arbitrary: if your players are dumb, then it’s gg. I love it when I ace the enemy team and then my priest ults my full health team while the enemy heroes are all dead. Like, thanks fucko, get benched. But that is also the point: if you are simulating the coach of an esports org, then you have to deal with the consequences of your players messing up. Pros are imperfect, and teams with the best comps can lose when they’re outmaneuvered by teams with much harder to execute comps. I mean, just look at T1 at Worlds: they have awful drafts and still win a bunch of games because they know how to handle the pressure and make their opponents crack. So it is actually quite accurate for your teams to lose in dumb ways sometimes, since pros do that routinely. That said, is it [i] fun [/i] for you to have functionally no control over the outcome of the video game you are playing? Ehhh not really. This is why Esports Godfather does so well: in that game despite being the “coach” for the team, you are playing the game on behalf of your “team.” This game is more of a simulation than a game; although there is some “skill” involved, there is also a fair bit of unfair RNG that feels cheap. I hope for Teamfight Manager 2 they find a way to balance the true “esports coach watching their team ape it while crying in the backroom” experience with a more “I am playing a video game to have fun and have agency” reality. Because why would I just sit there and get tilted at my meeples throwing the baron fight when I can just go watch any Iron game where I have no stakes? If I wanted to get tilted, I would queue up the actual MOBA (we know which one) and throw Baron myself. Now there is one exception to the “don’t really buy this” rule. If you have a group of friends who are all willing to buy this game, you can run a multiplayer league on this. This sounds significantly more fun than playing solo against the computer, since you can essentially run it as a drinking game with friends, where the loser takes shots and you laugh at your little meeples bonking each other. Or if you aren’t into drinking, pretend you are drunk (that’s what I do). Unfortunately for me, I don’t have friends who want to play this with me. So I base this assessment on pure conjecture. Buy this at $3 or below. If you’re really interested, $5 is a hard stop. I don’t even know if it goes on sale for that low, but that’s about what it’s worth given the alternatives and upcoming release of Teamfight Manager 2.

very fun and well made game, dev deserves some award or something honestly. its simple, but the strategy gets very complicated as you go. difficulty is just right. if you've never played league/dota/hots team based games with draft, there will be some learning curve, but the champions are all simple enough it "makes sense" as far as how to draft, just have to pay attention to patch notes and any outliers, but this is easy to manage since you get a report halfway through the split that shows this to you (can also look up champion info and see high winrates, etc). its really cool the game basically gives you analytics as if you had data analysts working for you. anyway, great game, 5/5, would recommend.

game is really good, you are the team manager for a LoL (esque) game and trying to coach a team to be victorious, game is great, had to restart a few runs, forming different strategies each tier. starts off 2v2 then becomes 3v3 then 4v4 etc. 10/10

I didn’t expect to get hooked, but Teamfight Manager had me obsessing over hero drafts and counter-picks like I was running a real esports team. You never control the fights directly—just set strategies, manage your roster, and hope your planning pays off as the matches play out. It’s simple on the surface, but I kept coming back for “just one more season” to tweak my picks and chase that championship.