14 DAY TRIAL // 
I don’t know how long I will be playing Lords of Football for, but the title from developer Geniaware Srl and publisher Fish Eagle is certainly an interesting entry in the football simulation genre, which also includes the likes of Football Manager and FIFA.
Lords of Football is similar to neither of them and can be quickly described as a simulation that’s equally interested in footballers as characters during training, once they are off the clock and in how they perform in matches.
Some gamers might think about the Sims when they first see Lords of Football in action and the game certainly encourages the comparison with its style and some gameplay elements, but the overall experience is more complex because it deals with larger groups of people.
In Lords of Football, players choose one team from the major European Leagues (no names are real because they lack licenses, but nicknames and faces sometimes point to real players) and then need to manage all aspects of their lives as they challenge for the titles or fight to avoid relegation.
So far, the idea sounds similar to Football Manager, but Lords of Football has no windows filled with information and no complex ways of dealing with the media and club leaders.
Here they can gain tactical or physical abilities and practice their match moves, but there are also more exotic options like punishing them for their lifestyle choices or having them work with a psychologist to reduce addiction levels.
Each building that a manager can control has various routines and gamers need to evaluate the strength and problems of their squad and decide which ones can be ignored and which ones need immediate work.
When the game starts, the options are limited, but completing chairman-delivered challenges will open up more routines that can expand the abilities of the team.
There are also tactical choices to make but, once again, no one should expect to see the depth of Sports Interactive’s football simulator.
Once training is done, the fun aspect of Lords of Football starts: night life.
Conveniently close to the club complex, one can find a radio, a club, a casino, a fan club, a pub and a restaurant where players spend their time after working hard on the training field.
Each of them has a set of personality traits that determines which of the facilities will make them happy and which can create a powerful and damaging addiction.
Playing Lords of Football is basically about making sure that players stay happy enough to perform well on the pitch, while also controlling any deep addictions and keeping their stamina level high.
It might seem easy to do on the surface, but it’s very hard to find the balance that can work for a team, especially as some of the most capable players tend to have almost crippling psychological problems that can be impossible to contain in the long term.
After a day and night cycle, a match day arrives, with the gamer required to pick a team and a tactical formation, mainly based on effective attribute value and on energy levels.
The simulation engine in Lords of Football is solid even if not impressive and the player has quite a bit of control over the action via a number of commands that can be issued to the entire time or to selected players after pausing the action.
Those who don’t want to sit through a match can choose to allow the game to simulate a result, but that seems to deliver some weird results when playing with my beloved Liverpool.
The graphics of Lords of Football are passable even if not impressive and they manage to convey the action of the game and deliver quite a bit of information about the players, their moods and their needs.
I am sure that Lords of Football will never eat up as much of my time as Sports Interactive’s Football Manager or the various versions of FIFA I have played over the year, but the game manages to create its own genre and can be a fun diversion for 10 or maybe even 20 hours.
I also appreciate the way the game takes the core football experience and mixes it with a little bit of paparazzi inspiration and some tabloid headlines to create a fresh experience in a genre where innovation is mostly about depth and not style.
