About a year ago I started building a football management roguelite. My two favourite genre of games, combined into what will (hopefully) become the game I always wish existed. I’ve been playing Championship/Football Manager since the very first version and this game is full of Champ Man DNA. Not just Champ Man either - Ultimate Soccer Manager, Premier Manager, LMA Manager, Football World Manager - they all have their place in my heart and in this game’s makeup.
The loop
You pick a country, take charge of their football team, and fulfil the expectations of the nation.
Win matches and you push deeper into the tournament. After each match collect new rewards - upgrade players, improve facilities, replace your aging players with wonderkids. Lose too often and your approval rating drops until the federation loses patience and sacks you. Then you start again.
The roguelite side comes from what changes between runs. Your starting squad is randomised. The cards on offer shift match to match. The opposition brings its own flavour. No two saves play out quite the same.
There’s also a choice of ambition built into the nation select. Pick one of the world’s top sides and you’re expected to win from day one - lift the trophy or find a new job. Pick a smaller nation and you’re building a dynasty from scratch, climbing the world rankings one tournament at a time.
What’s playable now
The game is currently in early access for a closed group of testers while it’s still taking shape. The way to get in is through the Discord, which I’ll come back to.
What’s already there:
- Nation and squad selection
- Match simulation
- A reward card system after each game
- Injury management to test your squad depth
- The South America Cup as the first full tournament
It’s a working loop. The core of what makes a football management roguelite interesting - the pressure of each match, the weight of squad decisions, the sting of a bad run - is already there.
What’s coming
A year in, the foundations are solid. Now it’s about depth.
The roadmap includes manager expectations and sacking mechanics, suspensions to put even more pressure on your squad, more tournaments covering the full football world, more reward cards to make each save feel unique, tactical depth including player styles, a hall of fame to remember your best runs, every remaining nation in world football and a lot of UI polish.
The goal is to create a game which invokes that feeling of one more match which all of the best management simulations have. To make you immediately start a new run as soon as you lose that cup final you’ve spent the last 2 hours building towards.
(The game is built in Godot 4 using C#, for anyone curious about the tech side.)
This is being built for the players
The reason I’m writing this post isn’t just to announce the game. It’s to find the people who will make it better.
The best version of Sudden Death Soccer gets shaped by players who, like me, love this kind of game - who notice what’s missing, who have opinions about what makes a football management simulation satisfying, and who want to help get it there.
That’s what the Discord is for. Join and you get the itch.io access code, development builds as features land, your name added to the game to represent your chosen nation, and a direct line to influence where things go next. I’ll even give the most involved contributors a full credit.
The game isn’t open to everyone yet, so if you want to get in early and help shape it - join the Discord.
