Football (soccer in the U.S.,) has manager sims pumped out regularly. Gamers love them some pitch battles. However, we don’t really get many other sports games within the sports simulator genre. However, Umix Studio has been working at a basketball sim each year, and they seem to be getting better at it with each annual release.

Umix Studio started releasing games back in 2014, but they’ve been getting downvoted each and every year, but Umix thinks that this could be the year that they finally take those downward thumbs and turn them upside down.

Umix’s Pro Basketball 2019 released recently where you have to recruit your players, train your players, customize and upgrade your arena, while also working up the ranks to compete in North American leagues, European champions, and international tournaments.

There are more than 80 playable competitions with more than 20,000 players to choose from for your team. This also includes various leagues featuring female players for the first time in the series, but I’m curious how well players are going to adapt to building up a female team or will they just stick with the dudes?

The game features completely remodeled 3D arenas, along with dynamic implementation of facilities, seats, and seat quality, new animations for the players and coaches, along with the improvement of the overall team recruitment.

Reviews are still sparse and only barely coming in for the game after it launched recently, but it appears Umix is serious about starting a Pro Basketball Manager franchise that will eventually become good… or at least, I assume they hope it will become good. It would be a shame if they were just in it to do some tax write-offs like a video game version of what Uwe Boll did with his awful video game movies (but the first Rampage movie was good).

Pro Basketball Manager 2019 also sports individual leagues with specific league rules, 1,000 playable teams, and an overhauled playbook.

You can learn more about the game by visiting the Steam store page.