You are a completely average, ordinary professional soccer player on the wrong side of thirty. You’ve been bouncing around between mediocre clubs for your entire career, and you expect to continue doing so until you retire- until your current club goes belly-up and turns your life upside down. You’re snatched up by the biggest club in the country on a free transfer, and all of a sudden you’ve got a lot more to contend with than late pay and bad turf.
Can you make up for lost time, leave a legacy and become a cult hero- or even a legend? Or will you fade away into obscurity?
– Your character starts out at age 31 and is male by default.
– Customize your personality, your playing style, and your life off the field. Be a family man or a playboy, straight or gay, or married to the game. Be loyal to your new club or try to climb even higher. Play fair or dirty, and face the consequences of both options.
– Be a tough-tackling defensive midfielder, a creative playmaker, or anything in between- be fast and powerful or quick and clever- just watch out for the dreaded Pulled Muscle.
– Build relationships with your teammates, your fans and all the people around you on your way to becoming a cult hero.
– Get called up to your national team!
Well, that’s the pitch, anyway! It’s a work in progress, and I’ll be putting up the demo as soon as I feel like I’ve got enough there (I’m working on it right this moment). In the meantime, I totally welcome suggestions, ideas, questions, whatever!
sounds really great think I’ve seen a few people saying there’s not too many sport COGs(and guess there isn’t ) would be nice to be able to play as female too, but definatley looking forward to this one.
As cool as the concept may be, I have a few fundamental issues with the plot. Namely…how do you plan to allow the player to increase in skill when they’ve spent the majority of their life and career as utterly mediocre?
I find it an unlikely concept that someone so apparently mediocre can suddenly turn their skill around to match players of a much higher calibre; I find it just as unlikely that they were lazy or holding back. If you’re still notably mediocre when you reach your thirties, it’s safe to assume that no amount of practice will increase your standing to the point that you could reach your national team. Or do you remain at your mediocre skill level and your standing increases due to your getting extremely improbable chances and opportunities from clubs and teams and managers that have little to no business doing so.
Perhaps you have an idea already set, but that’s my main concern. I’ll be interested to see how you spin this short of super soldier serum.
That’s a good point. I didn’t have “utterly mediocre” in mind in terms of the player character- just an ordinary player who’s always been overshadowed by bigger ones. That’s the key thing: you’re not a bad player, you’re just a small one who’s become accustomed to smallness, playing for small clubs or in small leagues, and have never really been challenged to reach the limit of what you’re capable of. So, when you’re signed by a big club, that will be your chance to actually step up. I hope that doesn’t sound like an evasion. I’ve taken inspiration from the players of Leicester City from last season; small players, many of them around the age of the player character in this game, who stepped up and succeeded when the pressure was on them.
In terms of what country the player will be from, there’ll be a lot of options, and that choice will affect gameplay; if you’re from, say, Germany or Italy, you’ll have to work harder to get called up to your national than you would if you were from, say, Australia or Jamaica.
As for the country that it’s set in, that will be Canada. I’ve done some pretty extensive world-building for a world in which Canada is a proper soccer country with a league and a culture, and I’m really excited to bring it to life!
Soccer is absolutely not a gay friendly sport and the FiFa, besides being so horribly corrupt they make the IOC look like the girl scouts are a veryhomophobic organisation in practice.
Also for the gay player to consider if the game is set in present day is that the next two World Cups are in countries where it is either very difficult to be gay (Russia) or outright illegal (Qatar).
If we have our character become a gay celebrity soccer player then we may end up becoming a target for Putin’s gay “propaganda” law as an out and open soccer player would likely be a walking case of “gay propaganda”.
Qatar is even worse, as the article shows they want to “test” Western players and fans with a self-devised “gayness” test conjured up by their “moral” guardians.
Of course if I were a gay soccer star I’d avoid Qatar entirely as no amount of fame or money as worth an Arab/Emirati prison sentence for being gay. The same may or may not go for Russia depending on Putin’s mood, though several of my gay soccer loving friends fear he won’t be as tolerant as he was for the Winter Olympics again.
So given that time is of the essence here that leaves our gay (and open and out about it) mc only one chance to really shine, that being the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
As for the game while I’ve never been terribly interested in the sport of soccer itself the few times in university that my friends dragged me to the sports bar the highlight for me was when the cute players randomly took of their shirts after scoring, a practice I understand is now, sadly banned.
I also hope that you will make it accessible for players like me who only really know the absolute bare-bones essentials.
Then again Slammed was an excellent game and I knew even less about Wrestling before playing that then I do about soccer.
think I’ve seen a few people saying there’s not too many sport COGs(and guess there isn’t 
) would be nice to be able to play as female too, but definatley looking forward to this one. 
