Truth be told, I don’t really care all that much about soccer games in particular. I never really got into the team management sims because I’m not a part of that culture, whereas I’ve never gotten into the games where you play as the teams because I am not much into the sport itself. Still, managing teams and playing on the field aren’t the only types of games out there, as the economic strategy game COPA CITY tries to show.
Developer: Triple Espresso S.A. Publisher: Triple Espresso S.A. Genre: Indie, Soccer Management Tycoon Release Date: June 16th, 2026 Reviewed on: PC Available on: PC Copy was provided through Loopr Marketing
In COPA CITY, you’re entrusted with the management of football matches and all the things that go on behind the scenes, building up fan zones across the city, meeting demands to satisfy the fans that come to watch the games in question, and creating unforgettable events for everyone who travels all the way here… As someone who loves strategy and management games, I found this angle quite intriguing and got rather excited to try out the game. Alas, the game journo debuff kicked in and left me with mixed feelings.
At its core, COPA CITY plays similarly to a very limited city builder. The infrastructure already exists, but it’s now upon you to create cool fan zones that the fans will occupy. These zones are nested within the city, varying drastically in size and shape based on existing streets and buildings, giving you a lot of cool opportunities to customise the experience based on the fan groups you’re servicing.
There are three types of fan groups in the game, each with their own needs. The Core fangroup requires a lot of catering as they’re the type to go check out the city, watch the game, and consume a lot of food while the Family fans need a lot of “fun” opportunities for the newer/younger generation of soccer fanatics… and then there are the Ultras who are there for the games and the games only but require additional security, unless you want the city to go up in flames.
As you get more traffic with various fans in your city, you’ll have to satisfy their needs, which in turn awards you “match readiness points”. Once you have enough of those, you unlock new tiers of buildings that, in turn, allow you to meet demands much better, make more money in the process, but also possibly cover multiple demands in one go, which is pretty darn important when space is as limited as it is in the city.
On top of that, you also have to hire volunteers through their own buildings who will then proceed to man food vendors, merch booths and other stations around the city. Catering and security only work, after all, when people are working said stations.
These systems are pretty layered in the way they affect each other. You’ve got to deal with daily upkeep from a lot of buildings, set up generators, and also balance expansion through marketing campaigns with the actual demands you’re able to meet. It’s an interesting experience, in my opinion, because of the depth that arises from time and resource management as well as your own strategic decisions.
Naturally, if you’ve seen news reporting around the World Cup at the moment, there are a lot of fans who don’t get along with other fans from other clubs, which is why you’ll unlock more districts and try to assign clubs to these districts. Once all conditions are met, you’ve got district takeovers happening, which is an interesting mechanic, albeit not explored enough, in my opinion.
Personally, I would have loved more guidance in the game. The tutorial does explain a lot of mechanics but does an awful job helping you retain that information. There are no great ways to look up info in-game after the fact and, quite honestly, I found myself struggling with certain aspects that are just not that intuitive.
Among them are the campaign goals: You’re expected to sell 1000 tickets to fans of two teams respectively during a charity mission, for instance, but even when you lower the price point to the lowest possible price, you just don’t get the sales necessary to complete some of these missions. I found myself struggling to complete some of the side objectives because the time limits are often too tight for you to do so. There are also no options to make things easier.
Similarly, the volunteer booths work automatically, but the stadium requires its own separate type of staff, which has to be manually recruited. This isn’t explained anywhere, which is why, for the longest time, I was struggling to find out why I didn’t have the staff necessary for the stadium. Since the volunteer booth is working on its own, I don’t get why the stadium booth works differently, you know?
I’ve also spent hours in campaign missions before trying again and again to meet the main objectives, but I’d oftentimes burn through my resources trying to satisfy certain demands only to then be left with no money when I needed a huge sum to get a marketing campaign set up all of a sudden. At times, COPA CITY chucks problems at you in a way that feels overwhelming, to say the least, some of which require you to achieve higher match readiness levels than you have access to in the beginning.
I failed a main objective a few times, prompting a game over, because the game gives you goals that are very difficult to meet out of nowhere. “Oh, you need a medic btw. You got 24 hours, and to get that unlocked in the first place, you should be at Tier 4 right now” – That’s not how organisation works. There’s no foresight whatsoever employed here.
Aesthetically, the game is very pleasing, and it’s nice to just take a look at the fan bases as they traverse the city and enjoy themselves, but most of the time, I’m too busy taking care of all the issues that I don’t actually get to enjoy the view. Similarly, I do appreciate the heavy accents on the different voice actors, but they oftentimes end up yapping excessively about things, to the point that I just can’t quite figure out what information I need to focus on.
COPA CITY isn’t a perfect game by any means. There are performance issues at times. I’ve experienced a fair few crashes during my playtime, long loading times, and this weird stutter when you open up card packs. The difficulty needs tuning, and quite honestly, the tutorial should get reworked heavily.
Since the game launched, a number of changes have already been made, including a price decrease, which is quite rare these days. I hope that the developers can eventually turn things around with it, but honestly, I find some of the game’s core mechanics rough, as you find yourself just placing down numerous hot dog stands to meet catering needs and then call it a day, basically.
It’s a shame, really, because I like the premise and adore the attention to detail that went into making this game. COPA CITY’s edges are just so rough at the moment that I can’t find it in me to recommend it as it stands. It has potential, sure, but it needs a lot of work before it can shine.
Verdict: COPA CITY is an interesting economic strategy game where you organize football matches and get to build up the culture around the sport, but it sadly fails to provide good enough guidance to deal with its steep difficulty spikes and frankly overwhelming curveballs. The tutorial is lengthy and boring, yet it also ommits many important aspects of the gameplay, and the campaign and standalone gameplay doesn't give you enough information to meaningfully manage this management game.
This post was originally published on Indiecator.
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