Welcome to Natural Soccer!
Natural Soccer is a fast paced soccer game with a strong focus on great gameplay. It is not meant to be a soccer simulation - so there are times I sacrificed some realism for even more enjoyable gameplay. So, for example, the ball is a tad larger than it would be in reality and the players are a bit faster than realistically possible because user’s found it to be more fun that way!
Another important design decision of Natural Soccer is that of very simple and direct controls, which are easy to learn but hard to master. There is very little computer assistance and you will never have to wait for an animation to finish before your orders are carried out, or something like that. This way, the player’s skills and fast reactions are the most important fact when it comes to winning or losing a match.
Natural Soccer comes with a very sophisticated AI (Artifical Intelligence) to play against, but really shines in couch-multiplayer/coop against friends and family!
You always control the player closest to the ball. It is marked with a circle in your controller’s color. When there is a goal kick or throw-in, there is no such a marker and you always control the keeper taking the goal kick or the player throwing in, respectively.
Note to Android users: The following guide uses the OUYA console’s button names. To map those to the on-screen buttons on your Android device, use the following information: = "Pass" | = "Shoot" | = Tackle/Chip | = "Pause"
To run, just push the joystick in any direction. It does not matter how far you push it, the player’s always run with the same speed.
Passing is done by tapping while pushing the joystick in the direction of the teammate to pass to. (If there is more than one teammate in the given direction, the game will automatically find the best pass receiver.)
To take a shot, just tap . In Natural Soccer - in contrast to many other today's soccer games - your player will shoot right when you press . It does not matter how long you press it to set the shot’s strength. This is done with “Aftertouch”:
A key element of Natural Soccer is "Aftertouch". This enables you to alter your shots for a certain time right after the ball left your player’s foot. Using Aftertouch, you can bend shots to the left or right and also lift the ball up or push it down.
This is done by pushing the joystick in directions relative to the shot’s direction right after you pressed the shoot button.
To make things easier to explain, the following sections are based on the assumption that your player is running and shooting straight up.
To bend a shot, just push the joystick orthogonal to the shot’s direction. In our case, since we are running straight up, this would be to the left or right. If we would be running, for example, from left to right, this would be up and down, respectively.
The sooner after the shot you push the joystick to the left or right and the longer you hold it there, the more the shot will be bend. Bending shots is an important key element in beating the keepers. So use it frequently.
Besides bending a shot, you can use Aftertouch to alter a shot’s height and distance.
Push the joystick in the opposite direction right after shooting to lift it up and make it travel far. Push the joystick in the shot’s direction to push the ball down and keep it low. Leave the joystick alone to let the ball fly at a medium height.
High balls are very effective to smash the ball into the net unsaveable, right below the crossbar. They also come in handy to play high passes right out of one’s own half and to the feet of an attacker.
Besides shooting and passing, you can also chip the ball - just hold down when in possession. There is no full Aftertouch for chips, but the longer you hold the button, the stronger the chip will grow.
Use chips for opening lob passes, for crossings or even to score directly, lifting the ball over the keeper's head.
When the ball is airborne while passing or shooting, the game will automatically make the player take a header. You can use headers both to pass, by tapping to start the header, or shoot by pressing to it. As soon as the player’s head hits the ball, the game takes the position of your joystick to decide where to pass/shoot the ball.
When taking a goal kick or punt, you can either pass the ball to a nearby defender by tapping or shoot the ball far into the field by holding . In both cases, hold the joystick in the direction to pass/shoot to.
In contrast to normal shots, there is no Aftertouch. Instead, the longer you hold down , the stronger the goal kick will be.
Throw-ins are very similar to goal kicks: tap and point the joystick to a teammate to pass the ball to him or hold to take a long throw. Again, the longer your hold down, the stronger the throw will be.
Tap to start a sliding tackle. The longer you hold the button down, the longer the silde will be. Be careful to not commit a foul.
As a rule of thumb, it is a foul whenever you hit an opponent before you hit the ball. If a foul is committed, the referee may book the player and show him a yellow or even red card, sending him off. This generally depends on how rude the foul was, how far away the ball was away and so on.
To take the penalty, hold down . The longer you hold down the button, the stronger and higher the shot will be. Be careful to not hold the button for too long, to avoid shooting over the goal.
Push the joystick to the left or right, to aim for the corners. The farer you push the stick, the farer the shot will be aimed to the left or right. Again, don’t push too far, to avoid missing the goal.
To defend a penalty, control of the keeper is given to you. Simply push the joystick left or right and hold it there until the shot actually takes place. This makes the keeper dive in the given direction. The farer you push the stick, the farer the goalie will dive.
If there is more than a single human player in the same team, the game allows each of them to take goal kicks or throw-ins or take and defend penalties.
That is, as soon as one of the human players takes an action, e.g. by pressing or , it's being executed. So you might better agree in advance who is responsible for taking action in a situation.
You can always replay the last couple of seconds of the match. Just enter the in-game menu by pressing and select “Action Replay”. To rewind or fast-forward, just push the joystick left or right. To toggle pause tap , to exit and return to the match press .