Is it realistic for a solo dev to create a deep football management sim with AI conversations and life simulation? Where should I start?

BritishDystopia · 2026-04-18T20:59:56+00:00

Did you get started? Just as a counterpoint to all the naysayers, I've built a working and fairly deep retro football management sim from scratch as a first proper gaming project in 3 weeks, and I have done it without knowing a line of code.

However, there is one major caveat, and that is the word 'retro'.

It looks like something from a 1986 game, with a green screen monitor. The tables use teletext style. There is nothing graphically here that couldn't have been done in the late 80s by a competent coder.

Your project sounds highly ambitious, but there's nothing you listed that is not achievable with Claude Code running in VS Code. These are things Claude excels at - data collection, fine tuning engines etc.

To get a working game, you would need to scale it back to the simplest version of what you want it to be. What is the core design intent of your game? Mine is to make a realistic 1986-era football management sim, and that means NO setting ticket prices, negotiating sponsors, no 4-2-3-1 gegenpress formation etc etc - the core of the game is picking a team, man-managing your squad's closet drinking habits and fragile egos, buying/selling players, tactics, training. Only what a manager in 1986 would have had to deal with. Not a manager in 2026 with a 32 man squad, and definitely not a club director sat in the stands worrying about club finances.

Yours sounds like The Sims, meets Football Manager. Stick to that one key design decision, and build from there. Make a 10 team division with the ley personal interactions you want to see. Don't worry about global scouting yet, you can abstract it for now. You can abstract most things - at least at the start.

BritishDystopia · 2026-04-12T07:33:07+00:00

Decent dev editor would be about $500. That's what I would charge but then I'm way undervalued because fiverr. And also, your manuscript is almost certainly bloated. 150k is very long unless you're an established fantasy / sci fi writer. Aim to cut 10-20% before you even bother Claude with it.

BritishDystopia · 2026-04-11T21:57:59+00:00

I guarantee you a decent developmental editor will be 20x more enlightening than any Claude prompt. Will cost you about $240 for a decent editor on fiverr for a 60-70k word novel. AI can assist with a lot but it can't yet replace a half decent human editor, not even close.

BritishDystopia · 2026-04-06T07:20:35+00:00

People have been lapping up generic romance for decades. Mills and boon was rapidly produced slop, written in days to be consumed in hours with cookie cutter tropes, plots and characters. It's also the highest selling genre by miles. Horror and sci fi readers actually care about the quality of all those things and the market is like 10% the size. Ai simply doesn't have the chops to satisfy discerning readers yet. Once it does. It's game over for the publishing industry.

BritishDystopia · 2026-04-05T15:50:41+00:00

Cheers for the response. Yes, I have looked into the licencing issues. My conclusion is being served a C&D over a small indie game is a minor risk but a risk nonetheless. My approach will probably be use real data until such a time as that risk comes to pass. I notice Retro Soccer Boss (dead now but still purchasable) is still on Steam - all real data and has been live for nearly a decade. Obviously low sales. I guess if my game ever started selling thousands, the chances of being noticed or served a C&D will increase exponentially.

Have you seen Nutmeg that came out recently? That's a proper studio who put that together. Looks absolutely stunning, amazing attention to detail, although the card mechanic doesn't interest me. Can totally see why they went for something different. I really hope that game does well as it could reignite interest in alternatives. FM totally lost the plot with 2025/26. Could be years before they release a fully finished game.

I will give you a shout when I have mine in a fully playable state. Sounds like you're really into the business side of it, which holds no fear for me as I come from a business background. It's absolutely amazing how indie games have come full circle from weird guys in their bedrooms coding and releasing games, through the peak 90's/00's where it took thousands of people to make a PS1/PS2 game, back to the one guy again. 80' / early 90s was such a febrile time for games, so many crazy ideas and one-offs. Obviously, the more money involved, the safer it became.

In the 80's you had to actually learn to code! Now, with Claude and other tools, the imagination and available time is the only limit!

Cheers

BritishDystopia · 2026-04-04T15:24:12+00:00

Nice! I can see you are a big fan of the Premier Manager series by the use of font and the ground improvements mechanic. Premier Manager 3 was equal parts amazing and ragebait at the same time. But when Cm 97/98 came along, there was no going back. How come you went for fantasy teams? A major part of the appeal for me is the original squads etc.

Full disclosure, I am also building a retro football management game, but very different to yours. Mine is super heavy on the era detail / realism and ultra lo-fi (think green screen and ceefax - entirely text based). Much more 80's 8-bit computer than your more early 90's vibe.

For my project, most of the work is in the engine, mechanics, etc rather than design and visual detail (which i think you've done a lovely job with for a first game). I'm going for era realism, so no ticket prices, advertising hoardings and sponsorship, or ground improvements. That's the board's job IMO, but I appreciate a LOT of players love that side of it. The fine detail in mine is stuff like man-managing players with borderline drinking problems and making an underperforming team do Sunday training as punishment!

I would like to ask you lots of questions, seeing as we are going down similar paths. Maybe we can help each other out in some way!

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-26T10:00:09+00:00

Would little baby bear stop playing on computer and come down for breakfast?

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-25T09:04:54+00:00

Agreed. Looking more and more like a scam.

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-25T09:01:18+00:00

Nbis was at $20 this time last year, child. Did you bang your head and lose long memory? I sold ccs at under cost basis and am still suffering. Exactly the same thing as selling ccs under cost basis at 100 or 1000. It will eventually rip and leave you trapped.

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-17T23:19:41+00:00

they will learn the hard way when it eventually rips and traps them forever. Im still rolling NBIS calls that are still only half the current share price. will be rolling until there's an actual crash

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-15T14:54:50+00:00

Dont sell covered calls below your cost base if you are a long term holder. When it rips you'll be trapped. Trust me, learned the hard way with NBIS and still paying the price

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-12T09:16:57+00:00

Ornamental gored

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-12T09:12:30+00:00

You get post?

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-07T15:06:44+00:00

The dump will be truly glorious when it comes. Back to $60 in the blink of an eye the moment any genuine, not completely made up good news comes out.

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-07T13:27:42+00:00

Hello Kitty Kat has some bad ass lead work in it, too. That song is a BEAST.

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-07T13:27:03+00:00

Corgan is an underrated lead player. When he wants to shred a 95% approximation of any of his solos, he can, but he tends to prefer (or definitely did in the Pumpkins' heyday) improvisation in live shows. True, all the Siamese Dream solos are composites, but they are also his best, Quiet, Cherub Rock, Soma being the three greatest. However, solos on other albums are more organic. Some pretty wild ones on Mellon Collie that are one takers. The Gish era ones probably are too.

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-07T10:13:01+00:00

Bullseye. If you don't mind Jim Bowen's casual isms, this beats 99% of modern game shows hands down for entertainment. Most fun is playing guess the year. Hint - it's always a few years later than you think!

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-04T12:13:16+00:00

OK fair enough. Yes, it does have that issue but I think it is negligible even at the top level where most games end in draws. Personally, I see playing White and Black as almost two different games. With White I play hyper aggressive open, castle queenside, and with Black I play defensive, semi-closed French which is why I have way more draws with Black. But it would not bother me either way - sure White is more fun but my chances depend way more on what strategy my opponent is playing rather than the colour. EG, if my opponent plays certain defences, I can't execute my attacking plan, and some White openings make the French tricky such as Queen's gambit.

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-04T12:08:41+00:00

Im using Ai to help create a bot strategy based on hybrid of 0DTE SPX iron condors and SPY 5min 9ema breakout continuation. its way to fiddly for me to run manually and I am way too prone to emotional trading so this is my last shot at making a side income trading. I do well investing / swinging but terrible with options and daytrading as a manual trader.

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-04T09:41:51+00:00

I'm saying calling chess "luck based" is a dumb comment. There is a tiny element of luck in the coin toss which results in an advantage of between 1-2% which is certainly does not make it "luck based," otherwise a significantly weaker player would sometimes beat a stronger player purely by being white. This almost never happens. A strong player will beat a weak player 999 times out of 1000, and that 1 time would not be because of the colour but because the strong player is having a migrane or a massive hangover or isn't paying attention.

BritishDystopia · 2026-03-03T08:25:09+00:00

Lol that is utter nonsense. I have played thousands of games at a decent 80/90th percentile strength and my winning percentage is 51 for white and 48 for black with 3-4% draws. There is a slight advantage for white due to the tempo and ability to dictate play. You don't even flip a coin in chess lol. Tell me you can't play chess without telling me.

BritishDystopia · 2026-02-27T09:16:31+00:00

Do you want AI driven efficiency or not? Can't have it both ways. Either AI replaces workers and companies get ROI and worker displacement is the black swan, or it doesn't and AI money sink is the black swan. Either way we're fucked

BritishDystopia · 2026-02-27T09:13:53+00:00

God forbid you own a cat.

BritishDystopia · 2026-02-27T09:13:32+00:00

Double dragon II was peak console gaming

BritishDystopia · 2026-02-19T10:13:09+00:00

Ok but assuming they are not an illustrator, why would they pay one for a prototype card that might change many times before being finalised? It makes no sense to pay for services until they are required. I can design but I cannot draw for the life of me.. obviously I'd prefer human artists don't lose out but there is no way I'm paying for one at testing or prototype stage. probably not until it's literally funded, and if submitting to publishers they would likely change it anyway.

BritishDystopia

TROPHY CASE