Ethan, my 20-year-old American tennis talent, is having a career year. Ranked 563rd in the world two years ago, he started the year at 189th in the world. I’m honing him into a dominant serve and volley player. His serve, volley, reflexes and physical abilities are steadily progressing in training, but the results aren’t coming as consistently as I’d like them to. After a bumpy start to the year where he is clearly out-performed by Sebastian, an 18-year-old Austrian and my academy’s only other athlete at the time, Ethan begins to find his stride as he enters the hard-court season, Ethan’s best surface by far. With strong showings in several tournaments, Ethan enters the US Open in good form and just needs to qualify for the main draw to accomplish one of the goals we set for this season. After several good qualifying matches where our training and game-plan work finally appear to be paying dividends, Ethan achieves the elusive goal of qualifying for a Grand Slam.
As his coach, I’m positively elated. Not only will I have a happy player who will probably want to stick around for another year at my burgeoning tennis academy, I’m also promised more money. Bigger tournaments, more cash winnings. Things are looking up! But that was only the beginning…
Such is the drama that Tennis Manager 2023 (TM 2023) provides in ample doses. Developed by French studio, Rebound Capital Games (a.k.a. Rebound CG), Tennis Manager 2023 is the latest release of this fledgling tennis management series. But how does it hold up? Let’s take a closer look.
Graphics / Interface
Historically, sports management games haven’t been lauded for their eye candy. However, I’ve always appreciated when a game seeks to be more than just a glorified spreadsheet and tries to visually immerse you in the sport you’re managing. Tennis Manager 2023 certainly succeeds on this front.
Similar to last year’s version, TM 2023’s user interface is clean, well-organized and easy to navigate. After you spend a little time familiarizing yourself with the various screens you’ll be frequenting (i.e. player profile(s), training, tournament registration, etc.), you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding the information you’re looking for. Also, TM 2023 provides a good amount of tutorials and tool tips to help you understand various game concepts & mechanics that may not be discernible at first glance. For instance, don’t understand the difference between player attributes “confidence” or “composure,” just hovering over them. Since you spend so much time in sports management games like TM 2023 in the menus and player profiles, I really appreciate how effortless it feels to navigate everything in TM 2023.
However, Tennis Manager 2023 not only allows you to simulate the matches your academy’s players will be participating in but also to view them in a 3D match engine. In this year’s version, when the 3D match engine first fires up, you’re greeted with a view of the stadium with stands that may be more or less full depending upon the round of the tournament. The game also provides a quick breakdown of each player before play begins. I appreciated the little touches to make this year’s 3D matches feel even more like actual televised contests. Once play begins, you can enjoy the match in real-time through 4 different camera angles and can speed up or slow down the action to your heart’s content. Through the settings option, the game also allows you to pick and choose which highlights you see if you want to progress through the match at a faster clip.
When it comes to the players and the action on the court, TM 2023’s players move fluidly and perform a variety of shots. While the players may not have an extensive number of animations, the tennis action feels realistic and is delightfully gripping at times. On a tense volley shot in the critical tiebreak, will your player bang home the winner or smash it into the net? TM 2023’s 3D match engine really brings you into the action and certainly helps with the immersion. I also found it helpful to watch a few points or games just to get a feel for how my player and their tactics are matching up against their opponent. Is the opponent constantly pouncing on our second serves? Are we playing too close or far away from the baseline? TM 2023’s match engine allows you to gain more insight the more you watch.
Also, in the 3D match engine, TM 2023 allows you to change your intensity levels (i.e. serve, return, key points), tactics and even talk to your player. It also provides you with a wealth of statistics, including 3D analysis, to break down the action. However, I had a hard time making good use of the 3D analysis. It looks fancy, but I wasn’t sure how to employ the data I was seeing. I hope Rebound CG can refine these statistical screens to make them even more user-friendly and tactically helpful, especially to those who aren’t tennis junkies.
Overall, TM 2023 graphics and user interface are really solid and aid the game in being easy to navigate and incredibly immersive at times.
Customization
When it comes to customization, TM 2023 provides a nice array of options.
For starters, the game allows you to create your own manager identity. You can choose to be anything from an utter novice to a legendary manager and everything in between. The game can auto-assign your attributes or you can tweak them as you please. In this year’s version, you’re also able to captain a national team right away or you can allow your success speak for itself and get offers along the way.
After you create your manager, you can also manage an existing academy or create your own academy and even player to start with. When creating your own academy, you’re given four different options – from starting at the very bottom to beginning with a high-profile academy. You’re also able to adjust the budget and academy vision (i.e. youth-focused, national academy, etc.).
After creating your manager, you then proceed to either start managing an existing player or you can create a player of your dreams. When creating your own player, you’re able to adjust everything from their name, gender, age, personality, potential, physical characteristics, attributes, body and starting equipment. With that said, when it comes to creating your own player, I wish the game allowed you to create young phenoms like Carlos Alcaraz or Coco Gauff. Instead, the size of your attribute pool appears tied to your age. So, the younger a player, the fewer attribute points they have to distribute. While this may work well for most players, 19-20-year-old stars like Alcaraz or Gauff show us that age isn’t always determinative of ability. Also, when creating your own player, I wish the game allowed you to choose from various body types, not just different facial or hairstyles. Moreover, I wish the game allowed you an easy way to upload your own picture / logo for your academy, manager and/or created player. This seems like a simple feature Rebound CG could implement in a future patch.
Outside of customization options available in the 3D match engine (see previous section), the game does allow you to adjust the language, currency, size (i.e. feet, meter), weight and speeds in the Settings menu. However, curiously, I didn’t find some of those options translated into the 3D match engine where for instance, the wind speed or temperature was still listed in more European-friendly measurements.
Also, when the game first boots up, it requests permission for “targeted ads.” Presumably, companies will be able to have ads on the walls in the 3D tennis matches as they do in real life, but I mostly only saw ads for Rebound’s products or DAV (Disabled American Veterans). I’m not sure how I feel about being marketed to in a sports simulation game, but I imagine it could add to the immersion if carefully implemented. Thankfully, you can turn off the targeted ads if you don’t want them.
Finally, while the game ships with some real player names and real equipment suppliers (i.e. Babolat, Lacoste, Head, etc.), TM 2023 also allows you to use the Steam Workshop to utilize player-made mods that provide real player names, real tournament names, tournament categories, etc.
Overall, TM 2023 is generally a very customizable experience. For the most part, you can craft the management experience that suits your tastes and play style. However, because the game lacks the ability to freely create players you want or even a fast sim to get multiple years of experience in your game world before starting, TM 2023 still has some room to grow in the customization department.
Gameplay / Sim Engine
So, TM 2023 looks good and is fairly customizable. But how does it play? Does it accurately reflect the world of professional tennis? Even more simply – is it fun?
Well, let me walk you through what an average play session looks like for me – and you can decide for yourself if it’s something you would enjoy.
When I start a new (or existing) academy, I like to keep in mind the academy directors’ annual objectives, whether they be sport-related, financial or reputation-based or some combination of the above. So, for example, perhaps the academy wants to recruit 1 new player, increase the reputation of the academy and have a bank balance of a certain amount at the end of the year. It’s important to keep these goals in mind if you want to keep the funding flowing and presumably, keep your job for the long-term. Unlike player goals, though, it doesn’t appear that you can negotiate with the academy directors’ on what your annual goals should be. I hope future iterations of Tennis Manager allow you to negotiate these, since sometimes, for instance, I’m perfectly content with the current stable of athletes I have in the academy and don’t want to add others. Give me the ability to negotiate and start to shape the academy the way I would like to. Also, I would like to love to see different kind of director boards. Perhaps some could be more nation-focused, maybe others could be super greedy – and then still others could prefer a certain kind or age of player.
With this said about academy goals, I really like what TM 2023 does with the player goals. Each year, you get to negotiate the annual goals for your tennis players. While the discussion doesn’t take long, it can be a cagey affair. You don’t want to anger your player by setting underwhelming goals, but you also don’t want to promise them the moon and then have them walk out before the season even ends. I really enjoyed these discussions with my players – and I wish there was more of this in the game. More ways to interact with your players, even occasional events that would pop up and force you to make a decision that has consequences. In my opinion, this would really help bring the tennis world in Tennis Manager to life even more.
So, with academy and player goals in mind, my next step in the average play-through is to note the current abilities and attributes of my current players and figure out what they need to improve in training to shape them into the players I want them to be and meet the goals we agreed on. You can let your academy staff do the training and alternate between various preset regimens, but I took a more hands-on approach this year in TM 2023 for the player I was coaching, and I felt like the results were not only better, but I also was more in tune with how my athlete was developing. Training options are also impacted by your academy’s current infrastructure. So, if you want better training results or different kinds of exercises, be sure to regularly reinvest some of your hard-won cash back into the academy.
Besides training, you also need to pay attention to your player’s game-plan(s). If your player hasn’t mastered defensive baseline play and you suddenly switch to it in a match, don’t be surprised to see your player’s game deflate faster than a cheap birthday balloon. On the surface, the Game-Plan screen is very approachable, but if you start clicking around and try to tweak the settings under the serve, return and rally, you may quickly get overwhelmed. While I appreciate Rebound CG’s desire to accurately reflects tactics in modern tennis, I sometimes wish they would make these screens a little more approachable. Some tool tips or suggestions on how to craft and tweak a good game plan would be really helpful.
After cobbling together a decent plan and starting to train, it’s time to register for some tournaments (or let your assistants handle this). At this point, you’ll notice a glaring omission from the game – you cannot regularly play doubles. Besides the new World Cup mode which sees nations competing against each other in a series of singles and doubles matches, the normal TM 2023 gameplay doesn’t allow you to link up with your favorite doubles partner. In my opinion, the lack of regular doubles is a little baffling, since some professional tennis players regularly play doubles and use it to hone their games. In future iterations, I’m really hoping Rebound CG expands the use of doubles beyond the interesting, but insufficient World Cup mode.
After all of this is done, it’s time to hit the court with your player and try to win a few matches. When it comes to matches, it’s important to pay attention to your player’s morale, shape and physical condition. All three can have an impact on your player’s performance in matches, but it still feels like “shape” or your player’s “level of pace” (tool-tip description) or current form has too much of an impact on a player’s performance. It definitely feels like it has been toned down from TM 2022, such that I was able to win matches that I should have when my shape was less than ideal. However, I would like a clearer understanding of how to improve “shape” and more ways to do that beyond just signing up for small, easy tournaments (and maybe physical training?). For instance, perhaps if my player could play some doubles matches and get a few wins under their belt, they would feel on the up-and-up and their shape could improve?
When it comes to actually playing out the actual matches, I like to quickly scout the opposing player by considering their attributes (or the ones I can see) and their play style. I also try to take my analyst’s suggestions to heart, but I really wish the analysts would provide more detailed analysis. That is their job after all! Perhaps better analysts could provide more informative scouting reports? Something to consider for TM 2024. With that said, I typically like to quick-sim the opening round matches of a tournament (unless it’s a Grand Slam) and then maybe enter the 3D match engine for the semifinal or finals. I like that TM 2023 gives me the freedom to engage with the matches in the way that I prefer or my real-life schedule allows.
TM 2023 also provides plenty of statistics (well, percentages) to analyze your player’s performance, whether you decide to quick-sim the matches or play them out. Without doing a deep analysis of the stats provided, it seemed like many of the results were realistic or at least within the realm of reason. Sometimes there were a bit too many unforced errors for my tastes, but perhaps that was due more to my aggressive tactics and player’s inability than the game’s sim engine. With that said, I want to make the same request I made last year. I really wish Rebound CG would provide us with actual amounts for the statistics and not just a host of percentages. Apparently, the game is tracking stats like the number of aces, but I cannot find a place where I can see the aces or unforced backhand errors for players are listed out. Percentages are fine, but numerical stats showcase the fidelity of the game engine and make the simulated world even more concrete and alive.
The final thing I want to comment on regarding game-play are the interviews you encounter in TM 2023. Periodically throughout the year, various questions will be lobbed your way related to your player(s), your academy, your management, etc. While some of the questions seem timely and appropriate, I found the whole experience to be a bit tedious. Perhaps this is how real players or managers feel in interviews, but it’s hard to know what impact my answers have or why I have to keep answering questions I could care less about. Starting with interviews, I think there is more work for Rebound CG to do in fleshing out the Tennis Manager world and making it feel more real, interesting and consequential.
With all of that said, I found myself enjoying TM 2023’s game-play loop more and more as I became more invested in my player through training, tactics and of course, success on the court.
Online Modes
Similar to last year’s version, TM 2023 doesn’t have any online modes to speak of. Through their lively Tennis Manager Discord server, Rebound CG provides a “Roland Garros Lefty Challenge” and a “Nations Challenge,” but these are simply challenges where you create particular kinds of saves to meet specific objectives.
As far as I am aware, there is currently no online player-versus-player modes or leagues for TM 2023. Hopefully, Rebound CG can implement something like this in the future. As it stands, TM 2023 is solely a single-player’s delight.
Replay & Fun Factor
So, you might be thinking, what happened with Ethan at the US Open he qualified for? Well, as a qualifier, he not only performed admirably in his first-round match, but he won it! And then in his second-round match, he showed up big again and won it as well. For a player who had never even qualified for Grand Slam before in his brief career, Ethan found himself playing in the Round of 32 at the US Open. Sadly, he lost in the Round of 32, but it was a monumental success not just for him, but also for my academy. Not only was I assured to have him on the roster next year, but I also felt like all of my training and tactics work was finally paying off. Ethan’s ranking spiked – and so did my enjoyment of TM 2023.
At the end of the day, even though TM 2023 isn’t a perfect game and I’d love to see it be a bit more customizable, alive and stat-friendly, there is no denying that I’ve enjoyed my time with this game. There’s a depth to this game that I certainly have not plumbed – and yet at the same time, I’ve found it fairly easy to pick and play (and keep playing!). If you’re interested in tennis at all, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this game. I think you’re going to like what TM 2023 has to offer. If you’re not much of a tennis fan, but you like solid, good-looking sports management games, I think this game is also worth the investment of your time and money. Who knows – maybe you’ll be coaching the next Ethan to a surprise Cinderella run at a Grand Slam – and having a lot of fun doing it.
Download for Tennis Manager 2023
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