Laurent: I love the early Championship Manager games, basically since the release of CM 93 I’ve owned and played them to death. I still play modded version of those games now using DOSbox.
Paul: I’ve never really stopped playing the classic Champ Man 01/02 release and I still pour hours into Sensible World of Soccer. Both of these games have the perfect balance of fun gameplay features and just enough ‘real-life’ simulation.
Laurent: We felt these early games were a perfect fit for mobile and the existing games weren’t quite hitting the spot for us. So we decided to pursue our dream of building a “back to basics” football management game with a focus on fewer features, designed for mobile.
The look and feel of the game is very different, how did that come about?
Laurent: The user interface is a big deal for me and I thought this was an area we could really make ourselves stand out from the crowd.
Paul: We’ve gone through several different iterations on the design. You can only really know if it’s working by playing the game itself. We got a bare-bones prototype working as quickly as possible and just kept adjusting and tweaking it, making lots of minor improvements over time.
Laurent: We had an idea early on that we wanted to bring some life and humour into the game using illustrations. We saw Dave Will’s work for Liverpool FC and it turned out he also loved playing the same old games as us, so he knew exactly what we were trying to achieve.
Paul: Some people have said the loading screens are their favourite bit. It was loads of fun finding all the classic and funny quotes to use. We used what could have been a really dull screen as an opportunity to show we’re not taking ourselves too seriously, plus some of the things footballers say are hilarious.
Features
Manage your favourite club from England, Spain, Germany, France and Italy
Update players and clubs using the free built-in data editor
Fast-paced gameplay – Complete a season in a matter of hours
Autosave feature – Pick up and play right where you left off
Drag and drop tactics with intelligent positioning
Upgrade your training facilities to develop the stars of the future
Upgrade your stadium to increase your club reputation
Use your scouting network to identify transfer targets
Title Challenge has been created by Kyan Games, a new indie games outfit based in Guildford, UK.
Laurent Maguire also runs Rodeo Games where he created the Hunters series and the Games Workshop title Warhammer Quest. http://www.rodeogames.co.uk
Paul Sturgess is a web developer turned app developer. He also witnessed Arsenal’s invincible season first hand as a season ticket holder at Highbury. He blogs about programming at: http://paulsturgess.co.uk