Score! Hero is a straightforward strategy-based football game. It is a free-to-play game that works well on smartphones, regardless of the screen size. Unlike other mobile football games that have you navigating your fingers between touchscreen buttons, you have puzzles to deal with here.

The game offers different scenarios of play, which makes it very engaging. The main thrust of the game is you joining a team and competing for them at international levels. In these competitions, your goal is to win your team trophies, and that’s where different scenarios play out.

Different scenarios that keep the tempo up

You don’t have full 90 minutes to be bamboozled by the direction pad. Rather, you get called upon to deliver a key shot or kick that can turn the tides for your team. How you perform these critical tasks is the thrill of the game. So, let’s take a look at some of these scenarios. The game is in its final minute and both teams are goalless. Fortunately, the other team has just conceded a penalty. The ball is on your feet and you have to put it behind the net. Now, you’re faced with the goalie that you must beat.

Another scenario could be a less tense one. Your team is already winning and then wins a corner. You’re called upon to take the kick. You could either draw a line to cross to a player in a box or draw a line to try to score yourself. The scenario I love the most is a free-kick. It’s always adrenaline when I try to bend the ball over the wall of players and put it in the top corner – beating the goalkeeper. There are cases where you have to get yourself in the right position, receive a pass, and score.

The game never runs out of these scenarios. With over 240 levels, there’s so much to keep you engaged for hours. To complete a level, you have to score the required number of goals – it could be one or more. Of course, it’s not always an easy task putting the ball in the net. Like everyone who’s played football on a real pitch, it’s always more difficult than you think. But you know what you have to do and how to do it. That’s the simplicity of the game.

In addition to the main levels, Score! Hero is replete with bonus levels. Similarly, there are bonus missions for each scenario. Sometimes, you have to do more than kicking the ball into the net. You have to go the extra mile to do so with your head. As you would expect, the bonus levels and missions make Score! Hero a game you can always come back to.

No victory goes unrewarded. Besides the bonus missions, you also earn stars for completing a scenario. To move into a new season, you’ll need to amass a specified number of stars. So the number of stars you get in each level (usually 3 stars in total) is very essential to your progression. Thankfully, you can always replay levels to get more stars to pull through. 

Not in any way a walkover

Score! Hero may not come across as one of the most riveting mobile games out there. But you’ll be wrong to classify it as a lackluster, overly simplistic game. The level of precision, skill, and accuracy required for every move or pass is unbelievable. Take this scenario for instance: you have a group of teammates in front of you to pass to and you make a bad pass, which leaves the receiver with no option of who to pass to. That not only ruins the entire attacking move but could cause you to lose a heart.

The game gives you 5 hearts to start with and every time you make a mistake, you lose half a heart. Then consecutive failures means game over. That underscores the importance of ensuring nothing goes amiss. If you have to curl the ball over the wall of defenders or make the perfect pass from the corner spot, you have to get it right. 

So what do you do when you run out of hearts? The hearts normally replenish during gameplay, but you run into problems when just can’t stop failing. In that case, you can replenish them with bucks which you get every time you score three stars in a level. Ten bucks and you’re good to go. What if you don’t have enough bucks to buy your hearts back? You have two options: either watch an in-game ad to win a heart or spend some real money to buy them. If you’re not willing to invest some real cash into this game or watch some useless ads, you can just wait for the hearts to come back to life. It barely takes an hour for that to happen.

Verdict

Score! Hero doesn’t pretend to give you a story where there’s none.  You’re here to score goals and help your team grow – simple as it comes. Everything is pretty set out for you, so there’s no part of the game you can manipulate. If an hour isn’t a long time to wait now and then for the hearts to replenish, then Score! Hero is a great game to play.

 It’s one of the best football games you’ll ever play on a mobile phone – if not the best. The game’s developers, without a doubt, understand what mobile football games should be about. You have uncomplicated mechanics, yet a completely entertaining game with high replay value.