r/gmgames

My retro football management game is coming out on Steam in November.

I grew up in the 8 bit era, and I wanted to capture that look and magic of fun football management games where you could rattle through a season in a few hours, but with all the depth and complexity of the early Champ Man games. Hopefully I have succeeded. It's been a total blast to make!

• 8 playable English & Scottish divisions, with 7 more top European leagues viewable
• Fully authentic cup competitions including the Full Member's Cup, Littlewoods Cup and Freight Rover Trophy
• Real 1986–87 squads with 20+ mental, physical and technical attributes
• Detailed teletext-style tables, results and stats
• International & domestic transfer system — contract negotiations, loans, free agents and 3,000+ real players
• Deep era realism: 2-player foreign limit, plastic pitches, cup sponsors, accurate stadiums, finances and more
• Emphasis firmly on football management — manage your squad's egos and drinking problems, not ticket prices and sponsors
• Realistic match engine with commentary, stats, team talks and more
• Tactical freedom with era-appropriate formations and levers
• Squad & individual training, reserves and youth intake
• Backroom staff and board interactions

I've also created a free to play Mexico 86 World Cup demoversion, and I have just released a free retro football quiz app as a companion to the game. You can find both on the website.

https://properfootballboss.com

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4856490/Proper_Football_Boss/

Hi,

I know this sub has had a few threads recently about vibe coded management games, so I’ll be upfront instead of pretending that elephant is not in the room.

I worked at Eidos / Beautiful Game Studios on Championship Manager 2008 and 2010 before being let go. LeManager (yep, I'm French) aims to revive that era of fast and addictive football management games, before they became over-complicated. When you could play a season in a few hours during a weekend without skipping half of the game's features.

I started working on it in August 2025 and I’ve been on it pretty much every day since: around 3 hours on weekdays, more on weekends. I’m not a professional dev. I can code in Python and JS, I understand enough C++ logic to follow and work with it, and my actual background is data analysis. So the game is very data/system driven: generated clubs, generated players, finances, match logic, progression, all trying to be plausible rather than just "magic numbers".

And yes, I use AI. Mostly to help implement things, to work faster in languages I’m less comfortable with, to generate fictional unlicensed first league club logos, and for translations/languages I don’t speak.

But the design is mine. The systems are mine. The data logic is mine. I’m not asking the AI “make me a football manager” and validating whatever comes out.

LeManager is very much work in progress and the final version won't be released this year. I am creating the Steam store page so I can soon distribute alpha keys for whoever is willing to give feedback, I might release a demo when the game is near completion but no Early Access. X/Twitter handle and Discord link available on demand for the ones interested.

Hi r/footballmanagergames

I’ve been playing football management games for years, and the part I always cared about most was youth development. I love scouting young players, planning future squads, watching talents improve, and seeing whether an academy can actually produce the next generation.

So I started working on a solo project called Football Academy Director, focused on the academy side of the game.

You are not managing the first team. You manage the U19 academy team, while also following younger players from U11 to U16 and planning their future pathway.

The game focuses on scouting, recruitment, squad planning, training focus, camps, tactical decisions, youth competitions, facilities, board expectations, and long-term player development. You compete in Youth Leagues, can qualify for the Youth Cup, and plan for the future through youth camps, scouting, recruitment systems, youth intake, and long-term academy progression.

Matches are text-based, with commentary, statistics, and tactical detail — similar to the classic text-commentary style of older Football Manager games, which is honestly still how I usually play FM. There are also touchline shouts, with a small but useful effect during matches.

The main question I’m interested in is:

Would a football management game focused mainly on academy development be interesting to FM players, or does it need the full senior club layer to feel meaningful?

I’d genuinely like to hear what other FM players would expect from this kind of concept.

Edit: Since a few people seem interested. Here's a link to the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4865840/Football_Academy_Director/

I'd like to show off the very early development progress of my PC game Grassroots. A football nation building game, more geared to telling the story of football growing rather than managing a team.

You name your nation and pick it's starting features like league & cup names. Then you create your 4 starting teams. If you're stuck for any names etc everything can be randomised

You pick your starting region, UK is the default.

Your teams play in the your league and cup and you can add teams as you go, up to 64 teams over 4 leagues

I've also got major leagues simulated from UK, Europe, South and North America, Asia and South Africa.

I plan on adding playing squads, and with that will come match screens, transfers, injuries and bans etc

I have a working demo ready for anyone who would like to give it a go and give me any feedback.

Post below and I can share the discord.

Full disclosure, I have been assisted by AI to bring my idea to life.

Ok ive tried AI but wasn't feeling it... But i have an Idea for a Game that I really think could be a hit.

A Wrestling Territories Game thats similar to Pokémon.... Hear me out...

Instead going from Town to Town battling Gyms... You go from Territory to Territory and face that Territories Champion.

Same Pokémon pixel art style and all.

I DID use AI to create this Image to give an Idea of what im thinking...

I have majority of the details ironed out just dont know how to make the game

Hi all,

Long time AFL / AFL gaming fan here. I’ve spent the last while building an AFL Club Manager simulation game. It's always been my dream to have a good AFL management sim, and I finally decided I'd make the game I've always dreamed of playing!

It focuses primarily on:

• List building / managing
• Drafting / trading
• In-game tactics
• Player development
• Club financing
• Long-term club strategy

The game is browser based. Works best on laptops & tablets as there's lots of detail.

aflclubmanager.com

I thought there might be some people in this community who shares the same passion. I'm really proud of what I've built so far, and would love people to have a crack at it.

I’m not really looking to 'promote' it as much as get feedback from serious AFL fans who understand how clubs actually run - and people who genuinely want a deep AFL management sim to have some fun with.

If anyone gives it a go, I’d genuinely appreciate any feedback or ideas for further improvement. Hoping to make something we can have fun with for years to come!

Cheers

Hi everyone!

Football management games have been my favourite genre for over 20 years.

I've spent countless hours managing clubs across PC and mobile. Every game had something I liked, but I was always searching for a slightly different experience.

Over the years, I realised I was always looking for the same kind of career.

1. Starting with a tiny amateur club.

2. Watching the stadium grow over the years.

3. Seeing academy players become club legends.

4. Fighting for promotion season after season.

5. Building a club with its own history instead of simply collecting trophies.

At some point, I stopped looking for that game and decided to try building it myself.

It's a mobile game, but my goal is to bring the kind of long-term career progression I always loved in PC football managers.

The goal is simple.

I want players to remember their saves years later—not because they won another league title, but because they remember the striker who scored 300 goals, the academy graduate who stayed for 15 seasons, the club-record transfer, or the dramatic promotion that changed everything.

That's the kind of football story I'm trying to build.

You start with a small amateur club at the bottom of an 8-tier league pyramid.

Everything that happens after that becomes your club's story.

I'd genuinely love to hear what football manager fans think.

A few questions:

1.Would a game like this interest you?

2.What's the biggest thing missing from modern football managers?

3.What usually makes you stop playing a long-term save?

I'd really appreciate honest feedback—positive or negative. I'd much rather improve the game now than after release.

If people enjoy this, I'd be happy to keep sharing progress as the game develops.

I've always liked football management games, but every "tycoon" version I tried felt really shallow. Tap a button, number goes up, that's basically the whole loop. So I started making the one I actually wanted to play.

The main idea is that you're the owner, not the manager. You don't pick the team. Your coach and sporting director bring you proposals and you make the calls. What you actually spend your time on is building three things:

• The club itself: squad, facilities, youth academy.
• The town around it. You grow it from a small village into a metropolis, and a bigger town means better sponsors, more fans and a deeper youth pool, which all feeds back into the club.
• Your own life: houses, cars, investments, a family, and eventually handing the whole thing to an heir.

It's a single-player mobile game and it's not out yet. Site's here if you want a look: https://hometownfc.app

Happy to answer anything about it.

AI disclosure (Rule 3): Yes, generative AI was used.

• Code: built with heavy use of Claude (Anthropic) as a coding assistant, and Codex (OpenAI) was used to review/audit the code. The design, systems and balancing decisions are my own.
• Art: most of the in-game art (player portraits, buildings, backgrounds, the in-game assistant character) was made with AI image generation. The club crests are partly that and partly procedural, code-drawn vector graphics.

I was disappointed with FM26 so I started coding with Chatgpt 5.5 for my own football manager. The is polished yet but core mechanics is finished.

251 countries

8 league levels per country

20 teams per league

30 players per teams

Total players - 800,000+

Youth Academy

Add next

Continental Domestic Cups - Champions league, African Confederation, Copa Sod America etc

Nation Domestic Cups - FA cup, Spanish Cup, Super Cups etc

World Cup

Advanced Match Simulation

UI

Contract mechanics