First Play: Watch us play Nutmeg, a deck-building football manager game
Can roguelike mechanics work when you’re in the dugout? We find out
After a break, our First Play series returns today with a look at Nutmeg, a deck-building football management game.
Based on football sticker books from the 1980s and 1990s, Nutmeg has players starting with a Division Four team and starting a 20-year managerial career that takes them through the English football leagues.
Players set training schedules and transfer players, speak to the press, buy merchandise and set ticket prices.
Training generates cards which are added to the player’s deck, which is then used when taking part in matches.
The game is available on Steam now, but do its unique mechanics work? Check out our video as we played the first 30 minutes.
You can view our video either embedded at the top of this story, or on our YouTube channel.
As the name suggests, our First Play series has us playing a game for the first time, with our capture device and microphone running to get our initial reaction in real-time.
First Play was introduced last year as our way of covering a wider range of games that we may not necessarily have the time or resources to give a full review to.
The hope is that First Play can introduce VGC readers to a broader selection of non-AAA games, and potentially discover a new favourite they weren’t previously aware of.














