Tryhard is an upcoming sports RPG about managing an underdog rugby club in New Zealand.
We're still quite early in development. But for now, it'd really help us if you wishlisted the game on Steam or idled in the Discord, mostly so we can show those stats to convince rich people to give us money to finish making the game.
If you're interested in why we're making this game / what's going on...
For long-time readers and fans of my games, it may come as a surprise that I'm making a commercial sports game. But I've been threatening to make a sports game for a while. And now since I no longer teach for a living, I thought I'd try an even more difficult way of earning money - why not try "going indie"?
So Tryhard is my attempt to sell out, yet on my own terms somehow. Like if I have to make some Combat Gameplay Loops With Numbers That Go Up, then at least let that combat and those numbers attempt something new and unusual.
For example, consider the basis of combat games: death. Death is usually (a) game over, (b) rare, or (c) strongly penalized. Because death is some serious shit, of course it needs some finality right?
This is where sports have solved a major game design problem: in most sports, defeated players do not die. And when defeat is not death, it opens up so many possibilities.
In Tryhard, when you lose all your Health, you just fall down -- and then you can get back up soon after. Characters might "die" a dozen times in a match. This is our version of rugby tackles.
And like many sports, rugby tackles don't earn any points for your team. Unnecessary extra tackles are often a waste of time and energy. Meanwhile, a dominant team will simply maintain possession of the ball, and spend less time on defense, and thus commit fewer tackles.
So if tackles are like kills, and a high tackle count is for losers -- then in a sense, a rugby video game would argue that killing is for losers. Which is a truth you wouldn't expect from a brutal contact sport.
I'm not the first person to think any of this, it's somewhat basic rugby theory. Yet I feel that the "basic theory" of most sports is still a pretty unexplored domain by the big sports game studios. (Not to mention the rather neglected rugby game genre, abandoned by AAA since 2008.)
I don't blame the devs, I'm sure they pitch fresh ideas every year!... But I'm also sure the executives shoot down all their fresh ideas every year.
Every sports gamer knows this: for whatever reason, the big sports game franchises have squandered their monopoly on sports culture.
Furthermore, I believe the sports game genre does not deserve its monopoly on sports. It has lost the mandate of heaven, it has desecrated its divine right. Leave behind your FIFA envy! We need bolder sports games.
This is the premise of "A Sportslike Manifesto", our new game design manifesto motivating the design for Tryhard.
Basically, if sport games have stagnated so much, then we should stop making sports games, and invent a new genre without the same baggage: sportslikes! It's like a sports game... but it isn't a sports game.
Sportslikes don't necessarily try to simulate a sport, or try to be a sport, or try to provide all the myriad franchise modes / career modes / licensed brands / microtransactions that seem to be obligatory in all sports games these days.
Instead, a sportslike is simply a game that thinks about sports and sportspeople. A sportslike is interested in any lens on sports -- culture, history, psychology, philosophy, ethics, physics -- anything that involves fresh thought.
I'm part of the huge casual / general audience for sports. I love shows likes Friday Night Lights, I've dutifully sat through shows like Ted Lasso, and I've binged sports anime like Haikyuu. These are all shows about sportspeople with distinct perspectives on their sports, and I wish we had more games that could do this too.
Like I can watch a casual football manager TV show like Welcome to Wrexham, but I will never commit to playing the hardcore spreadsheet-email game Football Manager.
And that's the key for me: I'd love something like a casual streamlined Football Manager aimed at clueless Americans who know to be vaguely afraid of the offside rule, but the big sports game industry has decided that people like me don't exist.
So in the end, Tryhard is a rather personal project for me:
- helping me learn more about Aotearoa New Zealand
- helping me learn about this local weird violent horny ballet called rugby
- making the sportslike game I want to play
I'll be making this game with my spouse and collaborator Eddie Cameron, along with some talented friends and contractors helping out here and there. (New Zealanders might recognize the art style of Toby Morris, who did some character designs for us, and will hopefully do some more as we progress. And thanks to Ākau Audio for game audio too.)
We're currently in pre-production, and we've had some early funding from the fine folks at CODE NZ to support our prototyping -- but now we must brave the Worst Game Funding Climate Yet. Hence, this announcement and plea to "WISHLIST US NOW ON STEAM" and "JOIN OUR DISCORD"!
Thanks for reading, we can't wait to get this game out for everyone.
PS: If you happen to be a publishing / funding scout, email me at robert (at) grapefruitgames (dot) com and I'd be happy to send you a pitch deck and talk you through the game.
