Football Coach College Dynasty

[Grim.Reaper]

I know we have some sports fans out there...have been keeping my eye on this game since I buy most of the sports games out there, especially football.  Comes to first acces on December 12th and will only have a price of $12.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2151290/Football_Coach_College_Dynasty/

I believe originally it started out as a mobile app seems like it could be fun, especially for the asking price.  Not a big fan of the player images and such, but I can overlook that if it has a solid game.  Although may not model everything willing to give it a try.  I guess I'll see tomorrow:)

Football Coach: College Dynasty is an all new college football management game. Build your legacy as a coach, starting at a small school and working your way up, or play as your favorite school, creating a dynasty that last decades. Featuring everything you love about college football, and deep customizability to play the way you want.

Features

Call plays with a robust simulation engine, featuring 100+ offensive and defensive plays
Recruit HS and JUCO players to join your school, assigning pitches and scheduling visits to win recruiting battles against your rivals
Develop your players in the offseason to match your scheme and gain an advantage
Level up your coach and earn unique skills
Enhance your school by spending booster money on facilities, academics, marketing, and more
Stat tracking for every player and every team
View team and league histories, past game results, awards, coach careers, and records with just a click
Customize your league with different playoff formats and conference realignment options

Play your way with tons of different settings to change, including injuries, transfer rules, draft rules, NIL, and more

Previous Details from Developer
This is an all new game built from the ground up for desktop, aiming to create an accessible but deep college football management game.

The game features everything we love about old and new college football, including:

60 - 96 teams per league

60+ players per team, each with detailed stat tracking and attribute development

Customizable playoff and conference formats

Head Coach and Off/Def Coordinators for each team, with leveling and skills

Athletic Directors with the power to hire/fire coaches based on expectations

School attributes, including Academics, Fanbase Passion, College Life, and more

School boosters with donation incentives to level up the school

Recruiting for both HS and JUCO players, with an optional NIL element

Robust simulation engine supporting many different formations and play types

Both coach and school modes

Rivalries, injuries, player and coach awards, and more

My plan is to release this game on Steam as a paid experience.

I started work on this game last fall, gradually making progress in the evenings/weekends. However, since April I've been able to work full-time on this game, basically all day every day. I'm super excited to get it into people's hands, and I hope the community is receptive to the small price tag that this game will come with.

I'm aiming for an early access release this winter, with a full release (hopefully) before the end of 2022.

Key Features
League Configuration
With all the talk recently in the real college football world, felt right to put this first.

The game will still support a fixed number (six) of conferences. This is to prevent the game from running too slowly, and makes scheduling much easier to manage.

The game will come with a few preset leagues, but these can be customized fully via a file import:

Each of the six conferences can be configured, supporting a variety of formats:

16 teams with four pods

14 or 12 teams with two divisions

10 team single division

More TBD

Many playoff formats are supported:

2 team BCS style

4 team

6 team, either at-large or with the 6 conference winners autobid

8 team, with options to enable conference champ autobids

16 team

More TBD

Bowl games with customizable names and locations

This should create a ton of ways to play the game. You can make 90s style leagues, 2015 style leagues, or future 16 team mega conference leagues.

Players
https://i.imgur.com/R1laKAp.png

This new game is backed by a SQL database, meaning I can store and query stats much better than before. Each player will have stats tracked for each year and each game within that year. They also will be awarded both league and conference awards like before.

One important thing to keep in mind with this game is that I didn't want it too complex. That means positions will also be mostly simple to avoid too much micro managing. For example, I don't split the OL position into guard, tackle, and center. I also combine Kicker and Punter.

The positions a player can be in this game will be QB, RB, WR, TE, OL, DL, LB, CB, S, or K/P.

In my apps previously, each position would have 4 attributes, and each player was locked into that position. For example, a QB would have Strength, Accuracy, Evasion, and Speed, which were different from RB or DL attributes.

In this game, each position will have the same attributes, totaling 25.

Each position develops these attributes differently, and some positions come into your school more college-ready than others. Since each position has the same underlying attributes, just with different strengths/weaknesses, you, as the coach, can move players from one position to another if it fits your team better.

Game Simulation
https://i.imgur.com/DdYTgc6.png

With a whole new system for player attributes comes a whole new game simulation engine.

In this game, plays are effectively 'simulated' on a 2D grid, with different players on the field performing different actions based on the play selected.

For example, in passing plays, the receivers run routes, the blockers block, the safeties defend their zone, the defensive linemen pressure the QB, and the QB goes through his progression.

This system allows nearly any play to be run: it just needs starting positions and actions for each player on the field.

In this game, you will be able to select from 100+ plays on offense and defense, in many different formations.

Example offense formations:

Shotgun: five wide, spread, trips, etc

I-Form: pro, wing, etc

Singleback: ace, bunch, etc

Pistol

More TBD...

Example defense formations:

4-3

3-4

Dime

Nickel

4-6 Bear

4-4 Split

More TBD...

The system also allows for complex offense plays, like option runs, play action, and RPOs.

You, as the coach, can configure your game plan and which formations to favor based on your team personnel.

Play Calling
https://i.imgur.com/nIE9sm3.png

Every game your team plays in can either be simulated, or played. Simulated means it follows the game plan set previously. Playing the game means you can control each and every offensive and defensive play call, and can easily follow along with a nice field graphic and drive chart.

School Attributes and Boosters
https://i.imgur.com/4E0M2U8.png

Every school in the league has different attributes about that school. Each of these has different effects on different parts of the game. For example, fanbase passion gives a higher home field advantage, facilities improves training results, college life improves recruit visits, and more.

Prestige is governed by the team's success on the field, and fanbase passion depends on the school. But the other four attributes can be leveled from 1 - 10 by spending money in the offseason.

Boosters are wealthy donors that give money to the school. Each has a tier from Bronze to Diamond which determines their base giving amount, and they each have a bonus gift which requires your team to meet some condition.

At the end of the year, you are able to allocate funds into each attribute as you see fit. One important thing to note is that higher levels require maintenance costs. This means that you'll have to put in money to maintain that level 10 facilities each year!

Athletic Directors
https://i.imgur.com/mzm7hSD.png

Each school has an Athletic Director that you, as the coach, must answer to. The AD has expectations each year that you must meet, or their opinion of you will lower. Lower that enough, and they may fire you at the end of the year.

Recruiting
https://i.imgur.com/Oe8045L.png

Recruiting has been totally revamped to be more interesting and realistic, without too much tedium.

Each week, you can take actions on recruits like:

Invite them to camp (spring & summer)

Scout them with a recruiter

Give a focused pitch from a recruiter

Invite them for an in-season on campus visit

Each recruit has different priorities, which affect how interested they are in a certain school. These priorities include:

Proximity to home

Playing time

School Prestige

Academics

etc.

Higher interest means your recruiting efforts yield more points for that recruit.

As you interact with recruits, their scout percent increases, which unveils more attributes. The recruit ranking isn't always accurate, after all. Finding those gems (and avoiding busts) will be key to nabbing a good class.

And more...

[matt3916]

Interesting.  Please update with impressions after you've played it/

[FarAway Sooner]

I've had a hard time getting into sports sims, but I have no idea why.  Maybe because it's too exhausting already following my own team?   ;D

[Grim.Reaper]

Interesting.  Please update with impressions after you've played it/

Downloaded and installed this morning, which a big kudos for even making the game available early in the day.  Haven't had much time with it, but couple of quick impressions.

1)  First, on sale for something like $10, with initial discount.  Hard to believe I won't get $10 worth of fun out of it.

2)  The resolution is a little small on my 4K screen, couldn't find settings to scale the UI within the game but you can do that from Windows and/or use utilities like I do.  It's not extremely tiny, but still a little small for my eyes.  You can change to full screen which helps a little.  I use a tool called res-o-matic which makes this a non issue for me.

3)  Just going through some early stages of the season, it looks pretty deep with a lot of options but seems to be done in a way to not over complicate things.  Obviously way too early to know if that holds true.  But so far, nice set of features which I think will be a nice balance of depth without overwhelming.  Time will tell.

4)  Only one thing so far that sticks out to me that "may" be an issue for me.  Although I love management games, I also like giving some of the duties to perform to the CPU for me.  So far, I haven't found where you can do that.  For example, have the CPU run practices and/or recruiting.  I know, these types of things are fun for people but for me sometimes I just like to sit back and see things unfold in certain areas.  It's possible I just haven't found the options yet.

Anyway, these types of games will take time to ultimately see how it is, such as if the stats seems realistic and outcomes are realistic.  But I will go out on a limb and say I'll get my $10 out of this game.  Hopefully the developer stays active and evolves the game during early access whereever it might be needed.

[Grim.Reaper]

Blasted through a season and wow, this does seem to have some depth while not be overwhelming, just the kind of level I enjoy.  Impressive this was a single person effort and only charging $12.  Couple additional notes.

1)  Turns out you can have CPU manage recruiting, training, depth charts, etc.
2)  Text is actually not that small after all for me.
3)  I do think there probably some quality of life things they could add but this is looking good in my opinion.  Haven't scrutinized stats and such.
4)  Not sure there is any mod capability right now such as real logos, names, fields, etc.  Would love to minimally get real names and logos to enhance the immersion
5)  Don't believe they have everything NCAA football has.  For example. doesn't have every conference and every team available and rosters seem smaller than real life.  Not a huge deal for me at the moment.
6)  Although I think the developer started things on mobile saw some postings said this will only be a desktop game and not looking at mobile any time soon.

Think I am going to enjoy this one as I wrap my head around it.