Pick & Roll Manager

Description

Your club, your career, your court

Take a club, a giant or a third-division side, and carry it as far as you can: 41 leagues from more than 40 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Africa, 594 clubs and more than 8,000 players living out their careers while you live yours. Everything crosses your desk: the roster, the money, the academy, the press and the mood in the stands. Nothing decides itself.

Your coach, your style

You create your coach before you start —defensive, offensive, developer, man-manager or tactician— and that style shows in your team from day one. Every other club has its own too: they sign what their coach wants, and the press has something to say when two styles collide.

Your career, in plain sight

Your career has its own screen: a reputation from 18 to 99 across seven steps, five licences earned with seasons and briefs met, contracts of two to five seasons with their release clause, and a profile of four crafts —playbook, workshop, bench and office— that grows with what you do. You set up to three career goals at a time, from winning a league before 45 to taking an underdog into Europe, and the ones you reach stay in your Legacy.

Every new club unveils you in its arena. If things go wrong you can ask to leave in the summer or resign —and the club you walk out on won't call again—; out of work, some phone always rings. The press asks about the offers circling you, and Coach of the Year shows in your name.

Your staff is more than a list of names: every assistant has a relationship with you, an ego and ambitions of their own. And before the game and at half-time you do the talking: you choose the tone and the message of every team talk.

Every game plays out on the court, with a commentator

The engine simulates every possession and the 2D court shows it to you with a broadcast camera, referees, scoreboard and live stats, while a commentator calls the plays and the names of the players making them. The plays you call are the plays you see: the pick and roll, the backdoor cut, the 2-3 zone, the steal and the fast break. You make substitutions on dead balls, call timeouts and pick the next play right there, give the halftime talk and, when it all comes down to the last possession, you choose who takes the shot. When it's over, the shot chart shows you where the game was won or lost.

A locker room full of people

Every player has a character and an appetite: the one who wants minutes, the one who wants out, the captain who carries the group, the kid who breaks through. They talk to you, they ask you for promises and they hold you to them. Your staff, your scouts and your doctor tell you what they see the way an assistant would, not in percentages.

You choose the face of the team, and not everyone carries that weight the same way: some grow into it, others shrink. Unhappy players are felt in the locker room, rivalries between players are born from what happens in your save, and each one can have a training role while his character changes over the years.

And each of them comes with a contract and people around him: agents who represent several players, option years, buyouts and personal goals with their own bonus. The captain you sit on the bench won't like it, and he'll tell you.

Find the next big thing

Spotting a kid before anyone else is the best thing in this game.

• Scouting the world: every country shaded by what your scouts know about it, with its own region-by-region map. Send someone on a trip and he comes back with a written report.
• Scouts with their own eye: when two of them see a player differently, you get both opinions side by side and know how often each one has been right.
• Youth tournaments: the Christmas and summer circuits bring together academies from many countries, and your scout comes back with names in his notebook.
• You're not the only one looking: other clubs follow the same kids and can sign them before you do.
• Affiliate clubs: send your youngsters to a smaller club to get minutes. They stay yours, and if they don't get the minutes agreed, they come back.

And everything else a club does

• The market: negotiations with agents, release clauses, loans, trades between clubs, a transfer list that brings offers for your players, and each league's nationality quotas.
• The playbook: twelve dials —tempo, shot diet, pressure, rebounding— written as a coach's orders.
• Know your opponent: their favourite plays, their line-ups and who you have to stop, plus how your team does with each player on and off the court.
• The club: budget, board, sponsors from your own country, ticket pricing by section, insurance, an unpaid-wages tribunal and arena works you watch go up.
• The academy: reserve team, youth setup and prospects who break out or stall; every country has its own kind of youngsters, and you can offer a player citizenship.
• Prospects: under-16 regional teams with their own yearly championship, and youth competitions between countries and continents; scout them, follow them and bring them to your academy before anyone else.
• Your world: pick which leagues are in your save when you start, and every competition explains how you qualify for it.
• The competitions: leagues with promotion and relegation, super cups, cups with a draw, three continental cups (Europe, the Pan-American and the Pacific, each with a group stage and a Final Four), the Africa League, an Intercontinental Cup between their champions, national teams with their own head coaches and an awards gala with a vote.
• The press and the legacy: a newspaper that tells your season, trophies, records, a Hall of Fame, cards of your club's legends and retired numbers hanging from the rafters.
• The atmosphere: a commentator with hundreds of lines in Spanish and English, and the music fades out during games so the arena can be heard.
• The editor: change leagues, clubs, players, crests and photos, and share your patches with others.

Achievements and cloud saves

Steam achievements, from your first win to the treble or the academy kid who turns out to be everything they said he would be, and your saves in Steam Cloud so you can carry the career on any computer.

Made with care, no shortcuts

Pick & Roll Manager is an independent game by Maillard Retro Labs, in Spanish and in English. The clubs, players and sponsors in the game are fictional.