itch.io

I'm a very recent fan of the genre, having only ever played FM26, really, but with the little experience I have, I can still tell this game is pretty fun. Not only that, but the level of quality-of-life implementation is far more advanced than I would expect from an indie game at this stage of development (being able to simulate anything from a single dungeon run to an entire season is soooo good, and not even the FM series is able to convey that so smoothly). I simply love how quickly you can get into the game or even speed through a run, and with most micromanagement being somewhat optional, the game really does have a very nice, fast-paced rhythm to it.

I should also add that I only found your game because I was thinking of developing my own football manager in a medieval fantasy setting, but decided to check if anyone had done it before since I wasn't sure the concept would work (luckily for me, I found you, and to be honest, I'm a bit surprised this is the only game I found that truly meets the criteria). Anyways, I'm saying this because I think the biggest flaw in this game might be a design problem I was having myself: in football management games, even if there isn't any match engine, the player can still imagine what is going on on the field and therefore the 'fantasy' works. For example:

• If you have a great young winger, you know from real-life football experience that you might have hit a jackpot and must develop him in order to cash out in the future. This works because even if there was no 'in-detail simulation', we know what wingers are and their value. But in a completely fictional world and 'sport' (dungeon crawling), the same scenario cannot be easily imagined or comprehended by the player. 
• Picture this: Whenever the player starts to underperform, who does he blame? If no goals are scored, you might change the CF, but in this medieval game, whenever my party looses the tournament I have to find the culprits between blademasters, wizards, and many other classes/races that are hard to picture since they have little connection with real-life types. It is still a totally doable concept, but requires a lot more detailed simulation with more complex visuals in order to convey the same ideas. 
• my conclusion is: FM can have a 2D game view with very little information and I can still tell what is going on, but I can't say the same approach works so well for a medieval fantasy. I would rather see more of the action rather than minimalistic 'Agar.io'-like sprites.

All that said, I think the game is solid as is, even if it probably doesn't have the same staying power as other games in the genre, at least not in its current state. More detailed sprites that actually show what the characters look like and simple animations for different actions would be great, though it might be out of the scope of this project, which I totally understand.

This is as much of a review as my own considerations for why I gave up or at least postponed the development of my own game, I'm sorry if it's frustrating, but that's only because I got frustrated working on this idea myself, on the other hand, your game is, like I said, fun and very solid, and I totally recommend it to other fans of the genre.