During my childhood, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Theme Park World and Theme Hospital were my go to simulator games. Only in the last decade has Two Point Studios taken the genre by storm with their comedic games that keep improving with each release. But when I first saw the unique concept of Copa City, I saw a gap in the genre for developer Triple Espresso to fill.

Copa City is a single-player, football events organiser simulator, where you act as a City Captain to set up the entire fan experience that surrounds attending a football match. Instead of managing on-pitch sporting activities, you become the mastermind to make sure the whole event takes place without issues.

Video Review: Copa City

At the start, you can choose between the campaign that features a series of tutorials before setting you loose in the first event day. Or you can select the standalone match mode, where you set up your own event to run. You choose between six licenced clubs from Dortmund, Marseille, Bayern Munich, Flamengo, Besiktas and Arsenal. And three real-life stadiums in Germany, Brazil and Poland.

Copa City's featured mode is the campaign. Taking time to do the tutorials, you gain an understanding of the basics to a degree. Each event explains the gameplay loop and how systems progress during missions: the aim is to purchase grids around distinct city sectors to establish fan zones by placing objects that either increase catering, fun, security, or business. While business centres recruit volunteers to help run your fan zones, food trucks serve core fans, fun attractions like fair games cater to families, and security stations are needed to manage the legion of hardcore ultra fans.

From here, bosses and colleagues assign main and side objectives which guide you to success, or offer randomised and unexpected challenges to gain boosts or risk failing and receiving a complete game over. Whilst side missions can reduce your budget or add bonuses like extra money or volunteers. But without fans, your fan zones are pointless and you cannot increase your match readiness bar. This upgrades the amount of buildings you can choose to place, or access to more specialists who are needed to unlock the stadium which allows you to sell tickets and increase your revenue. And with each level gained on the match readiness bar, you open a booster pack of action cards. Then, you select whichever card has the most useful perk: whether cheaper buildings, or a stipend for daily extra money.

Choosing the right action card, or rejecting certain side quests can lead to game changing consequences. After choosing your action cards, you access the tactical map to buy new grids to start on your current objectives. But if you don't go to the world map and pay for marketing campaigns to entice fans from whichever football teams are due to play, you'll fail your overall objective and the event won't be able to go ahead.

Then, within a day, a certain amount of fans will flood the city. Instantly, you need to address if your fan zones can cater for the amount of fans. If you have a 1000 family fans enter one of the three potential cities, either Warsaw, Rio, or Berlin, you will need to address their needs by purchasing more connecting grids in the sector to buy more structures. So, for 1000 family fans, you need to purchase enough fun activities to appease them. Or if you have core fans arriving, you need more food options.

This gameplay loop quickly becomes second nature; daily arrivals come in by aeroplane and you instantly pause the in-game timer. This lets you zoom in or out and tilt the camera, as you locate the next grid to expand. After placing the required activities, generators to power them, and tiles to connect everything together, the fans are happy again and you can return to gaining match readiness points.

As the event preparation continues, Copa City forces you to separate each team's fans into separate sectors, which requires sacrificing your daily amount of specialists to escort them. It bases everything in a grounded world where certain fans need to be separated. Once separated, you can continue to build match readiness and fan happiness by placing club specific items, and after buying out the sector's grids and placing enough club structures or mascots, the sector becomes aligned to that football club.

But it isn't a good idea to have a city full of fans if they don't attend the football match. So, this brings me to Copa City's other big element: stadium setup and ticket sales. Once you upgrade match readiness, you unlock the ability to buy stands at the ground and assign them to specific teams and fan types. Certain objectives also require stands to be assigned to particular fan groups at certain prices. Then, you can build out the entrance of each stand with ticket sale areas, food vendors and staff.

You keep building on this cycle of bringing in more fans, building out fan zones, organising safe march routes, assigning team hotels, readying the stadium, selling tickets, completing objectives and more. Although many advanced features like sponsors and certain icons aren't tutorialised enough.

As of yet, I've been unable to carry on my progress in either the campaign or single match mode. Unfortunately, my time with Copa City has been plagued by technical issues and gameplay bugs, so I've been unable to make substantial progress. I started to think the progression issues were my fault, and I still might not have been told every system, as there should be more tutorials or a gameplay guide in the menu. But Copa City doesn't feature many accessibility options.

However, big technical issues have forced me to restart the first campaign mission and standalone levels countless times. Consequently, after over a dozen hours, I still don't feel like I've progressed enough to be able to give the game a score. But in its current technical state on Playstation 5, I cannot recommend the game without a patch to fix the issues.

After a few days, I've put in over a dozen hours replaying the first full campaign level after the tutorials and numerous standalone matches. Each time hitting game breaking roadblocks like being unable to place a sponsored food truck on a grid. Without being able to place the item, I was told I failed the mission and the entire event ended.

From the beginning, even though it isn't acceptable, I could overlook the lower resolution, blurry text and character portraits, aliasing issues and constant screen tearing, as Copa City's concept is unique and the gameplay loop was trending in a good direction. Although, whilst researching Copa City during my review, I found a history of developer comments on Steam discussing the use of generative AI throughout development. So, I emailed the studio for an AI disclosure as I personally only value the creativity of people. If and when I get an answer about what assets do or do not remain, I will update the review.

However, I quickly began to experience a whole litany of controller issues too. While the controller layout is competent in theory, the execution feels like you're constantly fighting an uphill battle. Inputs refuse to work when you attempt to access a grid or change a stadium stand. On numerous occasions it got to the point where I had to reset the game, and unfortunately, this didn't always fix the issue. I lost hours of gameplay due to the input refusing to move the camera, and even entering the precision mouse mode didn't fix it - I was left with no choice but to lose my progress.

I wish Copa City had been delayed to sharpen up the console version of the game, as there's a really interesting concept and detailed gameplay loop under nicely rendered 3D maps. But with numerous game ruining bugs, controller and performance issues, I can't recommend anyone play it right now. I look forward to continuing Copa City once it's been fixed, but it would be impossible to rate right now, as I cannot progress.

I hope my experience is an anomaly, and the PC version is at least playable. Even though I've had a bad experience, I hope Triple Espresso turns Copa City into the game the concept and gameplay mechanics deserve, as right now, it's nowhere near ready for kick-off.

*Review Code Provided By Publisher

Copa City Review In-progress (PS5) - Not Ready For Kick-off

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