Button City Soccer Days PAX West Impression

Learning more about these adorable characters and watching as their rivalries and friendships grow is just heartwarming.

Cute anthropomorphic characters form a community.  This community lets them bond and grow together.  In turn, this leads to new challenges for these characters.  That’s the cozy progression of Button City Soccer Days as developer Subliminal Gaming aims to take the adventure gameplay community bonding aspect of predecessor Button City and its arcade, and expand it with stats, rivals, and soccer.  RPGamer got to take a look at how these soccer communities are developing in a PAX West demo.

Continuing on from the events of Button City, the Fluff Squad decides to take on a new challenge.  After seeing how well soccer players function as a team, the group decides to create a team to join a local soccer club.  Old rivals and new friends join in as well, with potential bragging rights awaiting for those victorious.

Along the way there is exploration and training that can be done for each of the members of the squad.  Doing tasks with team members will increase their bond as well as their stats.  Higher stats are reflected in their performance on the field, such as speed and kicking power.  There are plenty of options of how to train and spend time with the other members of the team. Staying at home watching TV is an also option, and figuring out how and when to rest is important though as players can get injured during games. They can also be suspended if they dive too many times at opposing players’ legs.

The main foe is Peppermint Pepperbottom, who wants to win at all costs, even bringing in a team of professionals to play against the city clubs.  Managing players’ strengths and having the Fluff Squad at peak physical and mental condition will put players a decent way towards winning in Button City Soccer Days.  There’s also a morale system in which characters can get weaker and more downtrodden if not attended to.

This leads to the soccer matches themselves.  Button City Soccer Days allows for free movement around and the ball reacts to kicks and touches as players take it up the field.  This makes dribbling moves and other precise plays hard to perform at the start.  Players can shoot with a quick press of a button or by simply rushing into the ball.  There’s a slide button to try take the ball from the opposing team, while goalies automatic moving around between the goalposts and boot the ball back into play.  One potential issue from this is it can be easy to tell where the goalie will pass making it easy to intercept.

Button City Soccer Days will have both a story mode and a tournament mode, letting players enjoy some games at their own pace outside of its story.  It was heartwarming to learn more about these adorable characters and watch their rivalries and friendships grow from the demo.  Players will be able to take the Fluff Squad to the top and try to win the Button City championship in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.