Why I Started Building a Cricket Manager Game
The story behind SELECT ELEVEN, a cricket management simulation game for PC and Mac.
I did not start SELECT ELEVEN because I thought making a cricket game would be easy. I started it because I kept looking for this game and never found it.
I have always loved simulation and management games. As a kid I liked games where the interesting part was not only what happened on the screen in that exact moment but what all the earlier decisions had led to. For example picking a team taking a risk on a player changing a system and watching something slowly come together after a lot of choices.
Football Manager was my game. I played it for hours. It is hard to explain why I loved it much. On the surface you are just looking at menus, numbers and player lists.. When you are invested all of it starts to feel alive. A player is not a number. A tactic is not a preset. A season is not a list of matches. It becomes a story you’re responsible for.
That is the feeling I always wanted from a cricket game. I am a fan and cricket has so much of this built into the sport already. The game is full of management decisions before the first ball is even bowled. Who makes the team? Do you trust the batter or do you need another bowler?
Then once the match starts cricket keeps asking questions. How long do you stick with a bowler? When do you attack? When do you slow the game down? Do you set the field for the batter in front of you or for the wicket you are trying to create two overs from now?
That side of cricket is what I love most. Not only the. Bowling, but the thinking around it.
I kept hoping someone would make a cricket management game that gave me that feeling.. None of them did. I wanted to run the club not play the highlight. I wanted to care about the player I selected at number six. I wanted the pitch to matter.
At some point I stopped waiting. Decided to build it myself. That is how SELECT ELEVEN started. It is a cricket management simulation for PC and Mac built around the parts of cricket that usually sit outside the action: squad building, selection, tactics, roles, conditions, club decisions and the pressure of watching a plan play out ball by ball.
I have been working on it solo for over a year now. That has been exciting. Also much harder than I thought. More features do not automatically make a game. A stat only matters if it changes a decision.
That has been the most important part of development for me: building systems that do something, not just systems that exist. I want SELECT ELEVEN to launch with a set of features. The match engine matters. Team selection matters. Club management matters.
The player needs to feel that their choices are connected to what happens in the match. I do not see the release as the finish line. For this kind of game it cannot be. A management simulation gets better when real players push against it.
That feedback is going to be important. I want to keep building SELECT ELEVEN for a time. The plan is to release it with foundations then keep improving it as more players get involved.
If you have ever watched a cricket match and argued about the team before the ball this game is for you. If you have ever cared more about a bowling change than a replay package this game is for you. I started building it because I wanted to play it. Now I want to make it good enough for everyone who has been waiting for the same thing. SELECT ELEVEN is a game about cricket management. SELECT ELEVEN is a game about making decisions. SELECT ELEVEN is a game, about strategy.