Just a heads up - Franchise mode is not in the demo. The demo is four teams and a game of hockey. This devlog is about stuff in the full game. And it is work in progress. It is built and it runs, but it has barely been played by a person (basically just me). With that said, this is one of the biggest things in the game that nobody has really seen. Franchise setup. Season length goes down to a handful of games and up 60.

Seven rooms

The mode has seven rooms and the shoulder buttons move between them from anywhere, so you are never backing in and out of menus over and over again.

The season hub. Next game, your division, and a club report telling you what actually needs attention. Things like who is hurt, who is scoring, and if you have any trade offers.

The hub is where most of the core “gameplay” pieces live. Play the next game yourself, sim it, or sim to the playoffs. That last one exists because I do not want to play every game every season, especially testing out longer franchise runs.

The room

This is the part most likely to change.

Every player has a general disposition: leader, workhorse, etc. On top of that sits a mood that moves up and down. It comes from where you play him, whether the club is winning, whether he is producing, what he is paid against what he is worth, who is coaching him, and whether he is hurt.

All of these things affect the game directly. Mood reaches the ice as effort when you play a game, it moves the result if you just sim, and it reaches the money, because a man who is unhappy asks for more to re-sign or won’t give you the time of day. If you bury somebody at the bottom of your lineup for long enough or send him to the minors, he asks for a trade.
Every rival GM can see that he asked, and he fetches less because of it. That is the cost of letting a room go bad, and all of this is modeled after a certain current Detroit captain who needs to go away.

How they feel, and how they fit. The left column is sorted unhappiest first.

Beside it is line chemistry, which is two separate things on purpose. Fit is what two men are: a passer next to a shooter, a lefty next to a righty, etc. Fit sets the ceiling. Time is shifts actually played together, and it builds over time so keeping lines consistent is helpful for your team.

Your head coach you hire will build your lines for you. He is biased by his own system, so a defensive coach rates one way, and a run-and-gun coach rates another. If you don't want to manage lines yourself, there is a COACH'S LINES button that sets them all automatically.

You also pick your own captain now. That used to be automatic, handed to whoever had the highest overall. Which as a Detroit fan, I know is a bad idea.

The trade room, which I keep changing and redoing

The honest version of this section is that I built a trade room, used it, hated it so much when in actual use. One screen was doing three jobs and it sucked at all of them. Offers came in as a slim row that popped a card on top of the builder, and everything was just being crammed into one screen as the trade feature grew.

It is three separate tabs now.

OFFERS. The list on the left, the offer you selected in full on the right. Every asset gets its own line, and the card carries the value, the cap hit, and what it does to your roster count.

Those three numbers are there because they are the three things that make two offers easily comparable.

THE BLOCK. Everyone the league has advertised, with the honest reason he is available.

The block came from annoyance from my own testing: every man in the league was equally available, which is not realistic unless you are 2026 Detroit. So there are no-trade clauses now, and asking somebody to waive is a real conversation. He weighs where he is going against how he feels about where he is, and he answers the same way every time you ask, so you cannot keep trying until he says yes. A yes is a yes for that club and no other.

You can also negotiate a no-trade clause into a contract when you sign or extend somebody. A man who wants one takes less to get it and charges more when you refuse.

Now, the trade deadline. The weeks in front of it now give information out. Rumors land on the wire, more often as it gets close. They are read off the actual block and the clubs actually shopping, so a club "in on" your winger is a club genuinely short at that position. And a man in the last year of his deal is a rental, which means he is worth a lot to a team chasing a cup and nothing to a club that is not.

Scouting and the draft

The draft board, and your four scouts.

Scouting is an in-season job, not a thing you do the week before the draft. The class is generated a year ahead and you watch it all season. You have four scouts, you send them at specific kids for a number of weeks, and a scout can only follow one player at a time.

What you see on the board is a range, not a rating. 42 to 54 overall, potential somewhere between A minus and A plus. Your scouts narrow the range on the kids you spend them on.

The draft itself runs pick by pick, and every club's turn is a screen you press through, but there is an option to quick sim to your next pick.

The front office

Nine roles currently. The panel top right is telling me my team rates 33 out of 100 and I can’t just hire my way out of that

You hire and fire the whole staff, not just a head coach. Goalie coach, power play, penalty kill, minor league, head scout, fitness. An empty seat is not neutral, it is work nobody is doing. Each coach does affect your games, your development, everything, so they do matter and balancing your spend is important.

Ticket price is yours to set, and the city has an opinion about what is fair.

The finance side is deliberately light. There is a soft cap and there are contracts, but this isn't an accounting sim, because I want the fun and challenge of being a GM, but without needing a CPA to understand the spreadsheets. One thing to call out is the league cap and your owner's budget are two different numbers, and his is lower. The cap stops you outright. The budget just disappoints him, and sitting over it costs you money and standing.

The wire. The story on the right is written by whichever paper filed it.

The wire is where you can see what is happening across the league. Streaks, milestones, injuries and returns, etc.

What is not done

Year one records screens are mostly empty by design, which is correct but reads as unfinished until you have played a season. There are certainly more layout bugs because 24 screens is a lot of screens for me to have looked at and found every single issue.

One more thing

Everything above is you against 23 computer GMs. But what if there was also a version where the other GMs are actual people. A league that lives on a server, everybody runs their own club, trades are between real people, and when two of you are scheduled against each other you sit down and play the game.

That is being built. More on that one later.

If you want to argue with any of these decisions, do it!! The demo is free if you want to see how the hockey itself feels: everything above sits on top of that game.

More entries as I keep building. Wishlist on Steam.