Cricket Architect — Free Browser Cricket Management Game

[rahulkhush]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on a small cricket management project in my spare time and wanted to ask people here who enjoy cricket games.

What features do you think make a cricket management game really enjoyable?

Things like:
• youth academies
• transfers
• promotion/relegation leagues
• ball-by-ball match simulation
• international vs club careers

I’m trying to figure out what fans actually want to see in a management-style cricket game, so any thoughts would be really helpful.

Thanks!

 

[rahulkhush]

The reason I asked is because I’ve actually been building a small browser-based cricket management project in my spare time and I’m trying to figure out what mechanics people care about before expanding it further.

Right now it has things like ball-by-ball match simulation, league systems with promotion/relegation, youth development, and transfers, but I’m still experimenting with what makes the long-term career mode fun rather than repetitive.

If anyone here has played Cricket Captain, Football Manager, or other management sims, what kept you playing season after season?

If anyone’s curious and wants to take a look at what I’ve built so far, it’s here:


Any feedback would honestly help a lot.

 

[cnerd123]

I was a huge fan of Stumped, it's a shame it died out.

The things I liked most about it were:

- The Player Development system. Players were promoted from your Youth Academy with a certain amount of potential (ranging from 1-20) and a certain amount of ability (also from 1-20) across various skills. A player's ability could never exceed their potential. Players could increase in ability through coaching, but also by playing matches, but the rate of improvement would slow down the closer they got to reaching their potential. Coaches of higher skill lead to faster improvements but could also get a player closer to their potential than a lower-skill coach. As players get older they started to decline, which meant getting them sufficient game time was more valuable. Each player also had a unique birthday, rather than every player ageing at once during the offseason. This made finding a talented youth player just as valuable at the end of the season as it was at the start of the season, and also made transitioning through older players feel more realistic.

- The level of control over match orders. You could set which player bowled each individual over and how aggressive/defensive their field settings were. It's similar to how From The Pavilion works, but with a greater range of aggression settings than just 'Aggressive-Normal-Defensive'. It was superior to Battrick where you're limited to just 5 bowlers and a set of pre-defined bowling orders, albeit with 5 aggression settings rather than 3. Setting fields makes more sense anyways than just some vague 'aggression' value.

- Player characteristics (i think that's what they were called). Added another degree of uniqueness to each player. Stuff like being a new-ball specialist, a death bowler, a 'finisher', etc. Players could have up to two and they had quite an impact on how they performed.

I still play Battrick, and I guess what keeps me coming back is the challenge of playing against other managers. Testing my strategies against theirs, and also trying to improve my team season on season. I also enjoy developing players to play U19/National team cricket as a side mission, always good to see them do well on a global stage.

That was ultimately the issue that Stumped ran into - it could never draw the kind of audience games like Battrick and FTP did. Both those games are facing declining numbers too, despite active developers bringing in new features and improvements.

 

[chris.hinton]

The reason I asked is because I’ve actually been building a small browser-based cricket management project in my spare time and I’m trying to figure out what mechanics people care about before expanding it further.

Right now it has things like ball-by-ball match simulation, league systems with promotion/relegation, youth development, and transfers, but I’m still experimenting with what makes the long-term career mode fun rather than repetitive.

If anyone here has played Cricket Captain, Football Manager, or other management sims, what kept you playing season after season?

If anyone’s curious and wants to take a look at what I’ve built so far, it’s here:


Any feedback would honestly help a lot.

Buliding teams and seeing how the world changes in your save. It was fun in all aspects

 

[devisssss]

I was a huge fan of Stumped, it's a shame it died out.

The things I liked most about it were:

- The Player Development system. Players were promoted from your Youth Academy with a certain amount of potential (ranging from 1-20) and a certain amount of ability (also from 1-20) across various skills. A player's ability could never exceed their potential. Players could increase in ability through coaching, but also by playing matches, but the rate of improvement would slow down the closer they got to reaching their potential. Coaches of higher skill lead to faster improvements but could also get a player closer to their potential than a lower-skill coach. As players get older they started to decline, which meant getting them sufficient game time was more valuable. Each player also had a unique birthday, rather than every player ageing at once during the offseason. This made finding a talented youth player just as valuable at the end of the season as it was at the start of the season, and also made transitioning through older players feel more realistic.

- The level of control over match orders. You could set which player bowled each individual over and how aggressive/defensive their field settings were. It's similar to how From The Pavilion works, but with a greater range of aggression settings than just 'Aggressive-Normal-Defensive'. It was superior to Battrick where you're limited to just 5 bowlers and a set of pre-defined bowling orders, albeit with 5 aggression settings rather than 3. Setting fields makes more sense anyways than just some vague 'aggression' value.

- Player characteristics (i think that's what they were called). Added another degree of uniqueness to each player. Stuff like being a new-ball specialist, a death bowler, a 'finisher', etc. Players could have up to two and they had quite an impact on how they performed.

I still play Battrick, and I guess what keeps me coming back is the challenge of playing against other managers. Testing my strategies against theirs, and also trying to improve my team season on season. I also enjoy developing players to play U19/National team cricket as a side mission, always good to see them do well on a global stage.
Enjoy gaming designed for both casual and dedicated players.
That was ultimately the issue that Stumped ran into - it could never draw the kind of audience games like Battrick and FTP did. Both those games are facing declining numbers too, despite active developers bringing in new features and improvements.

Yeah, that’s a really solid breakdown of what made Stumped feel deeper than most browser cricket sims — especially the whole potential/ability ceiling system and how it naturally created long-term squad planning instead of just “grind stats up.”


Do you think games like Battrick or FTP could actually bring that kind of complexity back without overwhelming new players, or is that level of depth basically what limited Stumped’s audience in the first place?

 

[cnerd123]

Yeah, that’s a really solid breakdown of what made Stumped feel deeper than most browser cricket sims — especially the whole potential/ability ceiling system and how it naturally created long-term squad planning instead of just “grind stats up.”


Do you think games like Battrick or FTP could actually bring that kind of complexity back without overwhelming new players, or is that level of depth basically what limited Stumped’s audience in the first place?

The latter; people like BT and FTP because it's simple and repetitive. You can get more or less exactly what you want from your academy during the start of the season, set a standard training plan, and leave your team to run on autopilot. Come End of Season, you reassess your squad, and then start again. It's not complex or fluid.

In Stumped you're also consistently trying to find chances to get younger players game time outside of Dev cricket to help them progress quicker. You need to chop and change your batting lineup when in a weak division so everyone gets a hit. You also really have to care about fitness due to the potential for injuries. Required more effort.

The Match Engine in Stumped also felt more 'random' which put a lot of people off. It's like the new BT OD ME. I love some randomness, feels like real cricket, but I had a cup game where a Worthless/Worthless who I accidentally put to open the batting top scored and I know that's a game breaker for a lot of players. People like predictable outcomes.