Santa Monica FC Online is a compact online football / soccer manager game for those, who are tired of waiting for next round in their favorite online multiplayer soccer manager game.
In SMFC Online you don't have to wait for other players - you can play as many matches as you want, whenever you want without any limits. While the game is minimalistic it contains most of the typical options of big online soccer games, like:
You can start your team in any of over 150 countries around the world currently available, you start with empty squad, using transfer market and scouts you find the players that you can afford and face the randomly generated opponents. In each game you take part in the 3 division league system and you choose in which division you want to start.
Back in 1998 we were working on Commodore Amiga game PSV Eindhoven Manager, a freeware football manager game, and just before the final version was complete we've tried to make a simple management game, similar to old 8-bit computer games of the genre. Only the very basic functions were available - you run your club in one of few countries (Poland, Italy, England, German, Holland and few others), have access to limited transfer list, basic staff options and very simple match engine - but the game was finished within 48 hours. We've called it Santa Monica FC. Why? Nobody really knows. It sounded good, I guess.
Santa Monica FC was inspired by classic soccer manager games, like German Anstoss or Bundesliga Manager with player skills described by single parameter and, just like in 8-bit computer times, other clubs were not fully simulated, the gameplay was concentrating on the club ran by the player as he was fighting to be promoted from 3rd division and reach the premiership division.
While the game itself did not make much impact (hardly surprising in 1998 when Amiga was unfortunately in decline) it was a nice touch to give us some additional ideas to use in PSV Manager that (at least in Poland) made its mark for the creative use of sound effects to comment the game progress and later we turned it into English version of the game.
Since 2002 we were running online soccer manager called Football-o-Rama that was quite popular, but after season 9 went into development hell and soon, hopefully, will be running again in brand new version. But since Football-o-Rama fans have been so kind to wait so long for the reboot we've decided to give them, just like before premiere of PSV Manager, something to kill some time while we are dealing with complicated new features for the main game. And thus the Santa Monica FC Online was born.
While Santa Monica FC Online is sort-of intermediate project, while we work on Football-o-Rama, we are preparing several game modes, so each player could find something for him - from stylized on retro games (like Anstoss or Bundesliga Manager), through casual modes to pro (similar to Soccer Manager, Football Manager or Championship Manager, which offer most depth). Apart from that we are working on few other game modes that will show completely different approach to the genre of football management.
