Super Star Soccer Striker

[AgentV]

I’ve begun work on a game: Super Star Soccer Striker.

Currently, it’s just finished the most basic coding (the skeleton of the game). I’m looking for people to test it for any bugs/inconsistencies, or for anything that would be nice to add to/remove from the game. Also traditional inform me of any bad grammar, spelling, typos, etc that you find. It generally acts as a text-based variation of FIFA, except in a fictional league, with fictional teams and players I created because I (obviously) don’t have the legal rights to any of the stuff in actual FIFA games.

To play the demo, go here: https://dashingdon.com/play/agentv/soocer/mygame/

Update:
Thank you to everyone who has given me any feedback so far. I am creating a list of known issues that should you have brought up for me that I will attend to. My current solutions are in bold.

-More consequences with your character’s SO (break up if the relationship goes too low, marriage if it stays high, etc). Similar consequences for a relationship with the team.

I have created a system where if your relationship with your SO gets high enough, you can marry them, and if it’s low enough they break up with you. I Will likely add more events later.

-Giving the MC more of a personality and make them less of a blank slate to better connect with the reader. This would include more scenes with the MC’s friends, family and SO.

I have added some “character” to the MC early on, and will add more interaction with everyone in the off-season.

-More interaction with other players, both teammates and opponents.

I have given the player a rival, whose stats are also updated. I will add some interactions when the player opposes the team the rival plays for, as well as when you and your rival are on the same team.

-Making which stats do what more clear. ie if you shoot on a header, making it clear that it uses heading not shooting.

Should have added what these stats do early on.

-Possible match rating, the playstyle of particular teams being a factor.

I will attempt to, but will likely be very basic/token due to choice script limitations. I could add in a career game MVPs in order to give this some meaning. Working on making this a thing, depending on successes/failures.

-Adding in a save slot.

Will look into how to do this.

-Making games less interchangeable.
Team names now show in-game, and each team now has a rival that they play in weeks 9 and 18. I will add in dialogue options at the beginning of these games, and could also make a system where events could happen when you change from a team to its rival.

Prompt resets when you check your stats.

Placed a page break with text in between in order to stop this.

More history needed for separate clubs.

Club history, prefered playstyles and rivalries have been added in.

League is too generic
The league has been adjusted to be one that travels the world in a different host country (or set of countries) .each season, letting your player travel the world.

Thanks again to everyone who’s taken the time to test the game and give feedback. I appreciate it.

[Virgiin]

I forgot to note the line but when I attempted to Train after a game I got an error and it said something about “Your Manager”

[augustus27]

This is a lot of fun, I’m super happy to see a soccer/football game on here. I do have a question, though, is the game supposed to end after the first season?

[Ananthajith_Krishnan]

A very interesting game… Love soccer & makes this special!!
Keep going!!!

[AgentV]

I’ll be testing the game myself over the next few days, and will try to find that bug. Thanks.

[AgentV]

The final version won’t. I’m still doing some testing on the first season and you should soon be able to play through an entire career. I’ll soon do a few playthrough myself and double check that the rest of a career is playable.

[Thfphen110]

While I’d be interested in a sports-based game, at the moment this one just doesn’t seem that engaging. It doesn’t really manage to grab my attention: it just feels artificial, impersonal. These are my thoughts so far, and I’m afraid they’re rather critical.

Mechanics-wise, I can see how it’s “text-based FIFA”, but I don’t think it really translates that well to Choicescript. I guess the matches are all largely randomised – which I guess helps replayability somewhat – but they all mash together in the end. Unlike FIFA or Football Manager, where the player has control over the impact of an entire match, here you’re just isolated and wholly dependent upon the RNG giving you a scene that would let you play to your strengths. Consequently, matches lose their importance. There is no agency, and no stakes – so why should I care about winning?

The way the stats are introduced and distributed is very barebones and slow;, and might be off-putting to some. This would especially be a problem for people who aren’t familiar with the sport, but even for those familiar with it, it was especially daunting and slow to build your character, even when you didn’t really know how the game would play out. However, above all, it reinforces the rather artificial nature of the game.

The biggest cause of the artificiality, I feel, is the lack of a connection to the game. Mainly, the player and all the other named individuals in the game are all blank slates. They have no character, so it’s hard to care about any of them. This also means that there’s no real stakes to winning or losing a match (outside of the whims of the match engine), since you won’t affect anything at all. Why should I care about the PC’s significant other, or the fans, or the team? There is some capacity for roleplaying – e.g. whether to interact with fans or with your SO – but there seems to be no payoff for it.

Sports game career modes – e.g. FIFA, F1, Football Manager – work because of the emergent storytelling that can happen against the AI. An AI player injures one of your players, you want to injure them back. An AI driver keeps spearing you off the track, you want to win against them. A team keeps smashing you at Home, you want to beat them back at their Home, and by a bigger margin. A manager makes a rude comment about you, so you conspire to steal all his star players.

But in a text game there isn’t that. There’s no way it can have the complexity of these titles with their AIs and UIs and visual elements; the amount of stats in FM’s far more comprehensible than the stats here, and that’s just because of the different UIs. So I think it’s a weakness to rely upon the matches so, and leave everything outside of it as sterile bit-comments.

It’s entirely your purview to make your game however you want, and not my place as a reader to say what’s right and not. But I feel (and I admittedly have a bias) that heavily-mechanics-based sports games like this – and like the published Fielder’s Choice – aren’t really suited to the medium. That’s not to say that sports games can’t work – they can, and Slammed! is the prime example of this, but that was much more narratively on-rails. But with the reliance upon random matches which all seem the same and no reason to be connected to the game universe, I began losing interest with the draft, and couldn’t get past the third match. I realise that’s partly on my end, but I hope I’ve illustrated why I did so.

I think there’s a great interest in sports games, and I would really like to see more get developed. There’s clearly a lot of effort placed in setting up the “match engine”, but also the universe. In the latter there are things hinted which could be greatly promising – the PC’s relationship with their SO, potential rivalries from before the game, the boss mentioning that they’re trying to rebuild the team. Things which would get people hooked, live out the fantasy of being a professional sportsperson, and the drama it all ensues.

I wish you all the best with the game’s development.

[AgentV]

Your criticisms are fair, I wouldn’t ask for feedback as to what can be improved and what can’t if I wasn’t willing to make adjustments.

I could add in a few things (ie, if the player’s relationship with their SO drops too low, the SO leaves them. If the relationship gets high enough you can get married, etc.) I guess when I add in achievements, I could also add in things like being close with your family, etc. if you get those high enough.

There also are some things I have which start coming into play later (there’s a random event where the coach writes about the player, and the article is better if your relationship with the coach is high enough). I guess I could also have a “captain” status, where if your relationship with the coach is high enough, you get to be team captain. I could also give the player a “rival” (possibly one of the other drafted players) who is also a striker, to give the PC someone to strive to beat. You stated that the nature of choicescript does limit me, which is true and I have had to work around a few issues so far, but I could definitely do a few things to make it more “personal” and “consequential” to the player. I was certainly expecting some feedback telling me what could be added, so adding in little personal sub-plots with a small random factor (to add to replayability) would be something I’m for sure willing to do. Thanks for the feedback.

[Thfphen110]

Thank you for the reply.

I could add in a few things (ie, if the player’s relationship with their SO drops too low, the SO leaves them…I could also add in things like being close with your family

I think more scenes – voluntary and mandatory – with the PC’s loved ones would go a long way in increasing players’ emotional connection to the game and in offering opportunities to flesh out their characters.

It also felt peculiar that the PC’s first professional match was the same as any other short of what happened at the start. Milestones in the PC’s career – first game, first assist, first goal – should feel significant and be reflected that way in-game. Having more interludes – and not just random ones - between matches would greatly reduce the routine of going through the matches and feel more like a career journey.

I guess I could also have a “captain” status, where if your relationship with the coach is high enough.

I think the PC’s relationship with the boss is another thing that could be significantly expanded upon. Salary, getting benched due to poor performance, disciplinary measures etc could play a role. The PC’s also briefly mentioned as being the head of a new generation, and the consequent lack of interaction with the senior members of the team is also peculiar.

Being made captain’s a good idea, but I think the journey up to there could be of great interest to explore. Also the minor things, like the PC being given set pieces in the first game – it seems peculiar, especially when they’re bad at it: perhaps the PC needs to have a good relationship with the boss and good set pieces skill to get set pieces etc.

I was certainly expecting some feedback telling me what could be added

I have a radical idea if you’d be willing to hear me out.

As I feel the matches lack enough importance and consequence, I’d suggest that the majority of matches be moved off-screen, with performance perhaps determined by something like leadership or coach/team relationship if it isn’t entirely set in stone.

The few matches which remain each season would get much more fleshed out, as would the opponents. There would be some narrative importance given to the matches as a result: these are the championship leaders, these are our rivals, we need a win here because x y and z, etc.

There could be random elements like the current match engine, but also scripted events which are bound to happen, and full pre-game/half-time/post-game scenes as well.

I know this would greatly reduce the replayability, which might be a concern for you, but I think something like this would substantially improve the quality of a playthrough and ameliorate some of the inherent issues with what you’re trying to achieve with Choicescript. Of course ultimately it’s your game and your vision, and I can see how this suggestion might be me overstepping.

[kckolbe]

Is there any correlation between skill and outcomes? I have max strength and am constantly overpowered, far more often than I win. Also, there are a lot of prompts that say “shoot” but after choosing it, the result says “head” so I don’t know what was tested.

All in all, this really could use more reason to care about what’s going on. It’s just choice/result, no real meaningful content in or outside of games.

[dp544]

I love the game, I gotta say I never thought I’d enjoy reading about soccer

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Summary

[AgentV]

Definitely going to add more scenes in the coming few weeks, especially for a lot of “firsts” but also seconds and thirds (a second championship, second MVP, etc. is still a major part of a player’s career). I think having games skipped is going a bit off from what I’m planning but I certainly wouldn’t call it “overstepping”. Thanks for the ‘tough love’ so to say.

[AgentV]

I did a quick proofread of some of my code, and not all the strength ones were set to strength. Should be fixed now.

As a general guideline, it works on a percentage scale (60 in a scale means 60% chance of succeeding, but sometimes its lower. I’ll do a more thorough read-through in the coming days. Thanks for pointing out the discrempancy.

[AgentV]

Oh, that’s probably the “manager” bug the first poster mentioned. Getting that fixed now, as well as the ‘points’ miscount that’s present in your screenshot. Thanks for the point out and compliment.

[Virgiin]

Yeah that’s the bug sorry for not writing down the line earlier.

[kckolbe]

I’d recommend tweaking the modifier or increasing the cap. Being the strongest in the league and barely having over a coin flip chance feels unsatisfying, like your abilities really don’t matter and the game is just a luck simulator.

[KEMAR_SIMMS]

demo is good but you should put a save slot

[MoSalahscores]

Just played the first match. I scored . It’s quite an intriguing simulator at the moment.
Things that could probably be added in the future: match rating, press and supporter reactions to your performance, teammates reaction to your performance eg selfless or a glory hog, relationship with the manager, stats of other league players, team strength and style (are the match opportunities based on the strength of your team versus the strength of your opponent). A save slot would probably be handy.
This is very good work at the moment though and I hope to watch it progress further
Edit 2nd match I scored a penalty but it didn’t reflect on the scoreline

[AgentV]

Definitely going to consider a save slot, since you’re the second one to suggest it. Going to see what I can do within choicescript for the rest. Found and fixed the penalty kick thing.

[Kvngrhomeo]

Can you please fix this issue…it clearly said that I won the match yet I lost the finals