UFL

EA Sports has had a stranglehold on the football sim genre for what feels like forever, and courtesy of Konami’s failed efforts to re-enter the space with a bang, there isn’t much competition out there for the EA Sports FC franchise. Soon, however, the Strikerz’s UFL is set to launch for PC and consoles, and coming after eight years of development and the promise of a legitimate rival for the big boys, it’s got plenty to live up to. Ahead of its imminent release, here, we’ll be going over a few key details that you should know to prepare you for UFL.

FREE-TO-PLAY

One of UFL’s bigger draws is, of course, going to be the fact that it’s a free-to-play game, following in the footsteps of Konami’s eFootball (though hopefully it’ll fare much better). Built on Unreal Engine, UFL is promising top notch visuals and production value, and of course, authentic football simulation. Hopefully the latter in particular is a promise it’ll live up to.

NOT PAY-TO-WIN

Free-to-play games are a dime a dozen, but only a small number of them are able to find the right balance with their monetization. Strikerz says it’s adopting what it calls a “fair-to-play” monetization model with UFL, which means players will be able to pay for cosmetic items, but according to the studio, nothing that will ever affect gameplay or could be called pay-to-win. Meanwhile, new features and updates will launch for free. Speaking to IGN in 2021, studio CEO Eugene Nashilov said, “In UFL, players will be able to control all aspects of the game, ranging from teams’ composition to what tactics and formations will be used in the upcoming match. Your path to victory is determined by your skill and ability. In other words, our game is designed to be a fair-to-play experience that implies a skill-first approach and zero tolerance for pay-to-win options.”

LICENSES

Securing licenses is a big part of being able to make an authentic football sim that audiences actually widely adopt. As far as players are concerned, UFL is making the right promises, having secured the FIFPro license and featuring over 5,000 licensed, real-world footballers. As far as clubs are concerned, licensed selections will be more limited. Some of the clubs that the game has secured official licenses for are West Ham United, PSV Eindhoven, FC Shakhtar Donetsk, AS Monaco, Sporting CP, Celtic, and Rangers, among others.

THE BASICS

Let’s get down to the moment-to-moment on-pitch action, an area where UFL is promising all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a football sim. Players can perform passes, lobbed passes, through balls, overlap passes, and more, while different varieties of shots included regular shots, lobbed shots, skilled shots, several kinds of trick shots, and more. Players can call for teammates and direct them to specific spots, wile in defence, the game allows for different kinds of tackles in passive and active tackles, not to mention the basics like slide tackles.

CREATING AND MANAGING CLUBS

A big part of UFL is going to be the global online league, which is the game’s central mode. To kick things off, players will create their own club, following which you’ll build a squad of players from around the world. Each season will see players competing against each other and climbing through the ranks and seasons in order to be crowned the UFL Champion. In a nutshell, yes, it’s the game’s own take on Ultimate Team, unsurprisingly.

MATCHMAKING

UFL is going to use a skill-based matchmaking system, which is something that the developers announced pretty much the day the game was first unveiled. Specifically, players will be matched against each other based on their skill alone, and climbing through divisions will allow you to potentially also break into the Premier Division. That, in turn, will open up exclusive new rewards, like spots in pro tournaments.

OTHER MODES

UFL’s selection of modes is going to be a bit more limited compared to its competition. The global online league will be the centerpiece of the experience, as previously mentioned, while outside of that, the game will also feature options for 2v2 matches, 3v3, an offline mode, custom tournaments, events and challenges, and missions. Those looking for a career mode will be disappointed, however. Hopefully that’s something Strikerz ends up adding down the line.

ENERGY MANAGEMENT

As with with football sim that sees you managing your own team, managing and maintaining the reserves of your squad will be a crucial part of UFL, which means making use of substitutions and properly rotating your squad will be something you’ll have to keep in mind. Meanwhile, the game will also have the option to spend in-game currency to instantly recover a player’s energy- which potentially sounds like something that could rub players the wrong way, so hopefully it’s implemented in a properly balanced fashion.

PERKS

UFL also features a progression system that sees players leveling up and slowly improving. Part of that comes through new perks. Every time you level up, you earn a point that you can then use on a perk, with each perk having four individual levels of its own. From passive buffs to more tangible boosts, different kinds of perks will allow you to customize the players in your squad in a variety of ways.

PLAYER CARD SKINS

Speaking of customizing players, player card skins will be the game’s primary way of customizing players (and its primary way of getting you to spend money on it). As their name suggests, these are skins that you can apply to your player cards. Coming in four different rarities, player card skins will primarily function as cosmetic items, but according to Strikerz, players will also be able to combine them in different ways for tactical boosts. How that affects the studio’s promise of zero pay-to-win mechanics remains to be seen, but it might be worth keeping an eye on.

SKIN PACKS

Cracking packs open as you continue building your squad is a big part of the Ultimate Team experience, and UFL will have its own version of that with skin packs, which are exactly what the name suggests. Packs will be either earned through gameplay or purchased with in-game currency, and each will include a number of card skins, with each card’s probability of showing up in a pack being determined with a dice roll by its rarity.

IN-GAME CURRENCY

UFL will make use of two different currencies in the form of League Points (or LP) and Credit Points (or CP), with the former being used to purchase customization items, boosters, skin packs, battle passes, and slots for players in your squad, and the latter to purchase customization items and skin packs as well, and also players in the transfer market, or instantly recover a player’s energy, which we touched on earlier. Players will earn LP by earning it through the battle pass (which will be paid) or completing challenges, while CP is earned by winning ranked matches and, again, completing challenges. Both currencies can also be purchased with money in the in-game store.

EARLY ACCESS

UFL is going to be available for free to everyone on December 5, but those who want to hop into the game a little early have the option to do that as well- if you spend some money, that is. Those who pre-order the game via its Founders Pack (which costs $15) will get seven days of early access, starting November 28.