Creatively, this has been a year of football for me. During my day job, I had a lot of time to listen to podcasts, and many of those were roleplay or football based. To complement this, in the evening, I was playing different board games with friends on the platform Board Game Arena. These activities gave me the idea to create a new football game. I had already created a football-based management simulation series called Football Town Manager. So why create another one?
There are some aspects that my original sim doesn’t cover; primarily, tactics. How to use the space of a football pitch with what formations teams play. The other area I wanted to explore is player creation. It’s my favourite part of the old football computer games. Along with this is the wonderful element of games like Bloodbowl, and other board games, where players are able to get Special Abilities (also part of Football Town Manager).
The system I created has gone through several iterations to try and streamline it, such as limiting defensive movement, and to make it more exciting, such as by adding effects when you roll double numbers on your 2d6 dice (two six-sided dice).
The final element was theming, and this took a loooong time! I was drawn to the World Cup as a theme. I love creating a way to score matches and play tournaments, and that is exactly what the original game does. Like Football: A Town’s Tale this includes story elements which uses Management Statistics. Depending on what you roll, your team’s performances can be negatively affected, or they can be united by your leadership and improve.
After the original, open-plan game, I created scenarios that would require less time to set up. That then gave me the idea of creating the game for previous World Cup tournaments. This was a fascinating chapter in the game’s evolution as it meant researching what formations real teams played, and who their star players were. I really enjoyed creating this, which is why I spent so many more hours, weeks and months developing it.
After creating the 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 versions, I need to take a break from creating these products. Especially as to make each experience unique, I not only tweaked the team tactics and star players, but also the formations used, tactical options and story elements. So I wish my product babies well as they go into the world. I’m proud of them all, and I hope they bring joy to whoever uses them to create their own world cup teams and tournaments.