TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKER 1: Games in this podcast range from E to M. [ XBOX sound ]

JOE SKREBELS: Hello and welcome to the official XBOX podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside XBOX. I’m Joe Skrebels and I have once again been drafted in as XBOX’s designated British correspondent because in this episode we are talking Football Manager 27 which arrives for XBOX on PC starting on October 29th with a console edition following on November 10th. And both of those editions are coming to Game Pass. But maybe you’ve never played this series before. Maybe you watched this year’s World Cup and thought I could do better than that, and did not realise that there was a game and a series to try to do exactly that. So who better to break down all of that than Sports Interactive Senior Features Manager Ant Farley. Ant, hello, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

ANT FARLEY: I am very well, thank you. Thanks very much for having me.

JOE SKREBELS: No worries at all. How’s the run-up to launch going?

ANT FARLEY: It’s such a buzz. I’ve been in the studio for quite a long time, 18 years but it never wears off that novelty of putting something out there in the world and seeing how it resonates with them.

JOE SKREBELS: I can imagine. And as we’ve kind of set up here the World Cup probably brought a lot more new eyes to football and we will be calling it football in this episode. I apologise. You can leave your notes in the comments. Are you looking at this as like kind of a moment for Football Manager in that way? Certainly hope so, yeah. I mean the World Cup is obviously a huge, huge global event and actually we had it licensed in Football Manager 26. First time we’ve ever had that. Licensed FIFA World Cup. Football’s the global game. And one of the main, I guess, selling points or appeals of Football Manager is we simulate that huge football world to a really detailed level. Anyone that falls in love with the game of football, the more passionate you get about it the more you start thinking, oh, I could do that better. You said at the top. Football Manager gives you a chance to prove that by kind of making those decisions, making those calls that a real-life football manager would do in a real kind of simulation environment. Very detailed simulation environment. And you’ve got at it there but for someone who might not know exactly what this series is or what this genre is, how do you sum up something this wide ranging?

ANT FARLEY: It’s more of a strategy simulation title than an action title. You’re not controlling the players but really it’s about the core areas of what a real-life football manager or head coach does. They’re making transfers. They’re buying new players. They’re training their team. They’re setting the tactic. They’re setting the game plan. They’re managing finances and budgets. It sounds like a job basically because what we’re trying to do is simulate the job of a real football manager. We have a lot of in-game mechanics if you like that help with that onboarding. Let’s just say you’re new to the game and you know the buying of the players is something that really excites you but maybe the training not so much might be something you want to kind of get around to a little bit later into your journey. We have the option to delegate that to your staff members. One of our big selling points if you like is our database of players and staff which is over a million human beings that we research and we get their attributes, and you know the information and how much potential they’ve got for players. So you’ve got the real world staff at these football clubs as well. So you can kind of tailor their experience that you want from it. You could play an FM save where all you’re doing is picking your tactics and playing the matches or you can really go into the big detail of taking care of everything, micromanaging every element of what goes on at your football club. We give you those options. You know, if you think you can do better than a real-life football manager we’ll give you the opportunity to prove it.

JOE SKREBELS: As you mentioned, this series has been going on for a very long time at this point. How are you approaching this year? How you’re iterating on that new take on the game that you had last year?

ANT FARLEY: I think, iterating is a really key word there. So the FM26 release was our first game in the Unity engine that required everything to be designed and built from the ground up again. So what that has given us now in FM27 is a foundation that we can then get back into that rhythm of iterating on. The changes we’ve made for 27 are a lot about reacting to feedback, both internal and external. We’ve tried to make the game easiest to navigate. Some of our consumers felt the 26 felt a bit narrowed in on your own club, what’s happening at your own club. And I think we realized that was a lot about the navigation of the title. It wasn’t necessarily as easy to get down those rabbit holes that FM fans fall in love with. People can kind of sort of click around FM and end up all of a sudden, I’m looking at a player in the Bulgarian second tier and you go, well, hang on, how did I end up here. (Laughter.) The magic of FM in a lot of ways. So a lot of the changes for 27 are about reducing the amount of clicks to take on that exploration through the navigation of the title. And we also wanted to bring a few more new choices to the experience. Everything is gearing towards match day as a football manager. Ultimately, you’re going to be judged on winning football matches, fulfilling the criteria of your team. And we’ve introduced a new cool feature called Tactical Tweaks this year, which I think will be really helpful for people that don’t know football that well or don’t know FM that well, actually. The tactics side of the match simulation can be a bit intimidating, I think, as the real world of football tactics can get quite complicated. So what we’ve done with Tactical Tweaks, if we’ve effectively given you a single button to press that will make multiple changes and it kind of summarizes it a little bit. If I want my team to play with more urgency, I can press a button that says, play with more urgency. And what that’s doing is it’s making a bunch of different tactical changes in the system, but you’re not having to navigate those menus. And crucially, you’re doing that from the touchline as well as a manager. So you feel a lot more of an active participant in those matches by, you know, really feeling like you’re shouting from the touchline and instructing, you know, you get forward, you come back a little bit. We’re very, very fortunate that we benefit from what we call foot talks in the studio, which is where we get real world professionals from football that come in and kind of talk to us in a nice safe environment. And that can range from, you know, people that work in the recruitment side, technical directors, but right down to those real world football managers as well. And we use the insights we can get from those discussions to help inform our features year on year. That Tactical Tweaks is one that we’ve really heard a lot from insiders on. How do you deliver instructions to your team from the touchline? And if you’re in a big loud stadium, right, you can’t be getting into the real detail of what you want them to be doing, but you can give a simplified instruction that the players then understand and can kind of enact. So this is a cool version of that for 27.

JOE SKREBELS: We’ve heard about clubs using your database for real life player scouting. There are top flight managers, Will Still, recently, who have credited the game to them starting their careers. There was at one point and a whole online theory that Jose Mourinho played the game because someone spotted the icon on his laptop in a documentary. I mean, do you think about it as you’re now beyond simulating football and into almost actually affecting football in that way?

ANT FARLEY: Yeah, I think so to an extent. I mean, the real trends in football over the last sort of 10 years or so has been towards data. And you see some really successful teams in the UK, you know, Brentford and Brighton that are doing fantastically well. They’ve really started from kind of a data first perspective, you know. And I think that that is something that, you know, Football Manager has really been an influence on because that’s really what you’ve been doing while you’ve been playing our game. You’re looking at attributes and form ratings and stats and, you know, trying to use those to inform your decisions of what you want to do on the pitch. And I do think that that is a huge part of football these days that we’ve had a big influence on.

JOE SKREBELS: I literally support Real Betis, a Spanish club, because of a Football Manager save in 2005. You hear this kind of story a lot. I’d love to know if the studio has favourite stories about how people have sort of taken Football Manager beyond the game. >> My absolute hero growing up was Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and learning that he played the game that I then went on to work on. And then he ended up managing the team that I love. You know, I was there seeing him on the touchline and I’m like, oh yes, he’s one of us. [ Laughter ] So there’s so many things like that. Players as well, Anton Griezmann, Dembele. They’re very vocal FM fans. So yeah, we’ve got a lot of cool stories. What would you suggest to someone who’s never played before? How could they start a game of FM and learn the ropes most easily?

ANT FARLEY: It’s something we talk about an awful lot. We’ve got this big, complicated beast, but we want to make sure that it’s not unfriendly. I think that was a lot of the redesigns that we took in place when we moved to Unity Engine. We’re about trying to kind of make it a little bit friendly as an experience, you know, a little bit more affordance, a little bit more predictability mechanically, which can be handled relatively well with in-game tutorialization. I think there’s a lot of great content creators out there that put videos together that explain kind of how to do what you’re looking to do in the game. Football is a game of marginal gains. We’re in a maybe unique position as a game where you can kind of make all of the right choices and all the right decisions and still lose the game. [ Laughter ] That’s how football is. So when that penny drops and you start getting to that, like that reward of doing well, when, you know, seeing the team you support grow and run up the leagues, or you may be taking a plucky underdog and, you know, killing a giant in a cup game or something like that, that’s where you really start to learn the appeal of the game at that point. So if you’ve not got a pre-existing relationship with football, I think that that, you know, requires a level of patience a little bit further. If you’re a football fan, you’re going to kind of be halfway there already.

JOE SKREBELS: I saw that you brought back watching cup draws like team by team coming out of the hat. And this idea that there’s something to be anticipated — is narrativization almost part of the watchword this year for you?

ANT FARLEY: Yeah, very much so. Immersion was a real key word for us this year. I’ve touched on that with the navigation, that kind of organic immersion that you can feel through gameplay and just through kind of like browsing that football world that’s going on around you. But we also put a lot of thought into the actual composition of the screens this year as well. Those as immersive as possible. What that means in reality is if you go and look at a club that you’re not managing, right, let’s just say you’re managing Arsenal and you go and have a look at Bournemouth, you should get a sense of the past, present and future of Bournemouth in that moment. Who are Bournemouth? You’ve seen their rise up the leagues over the last few seasons and you get that sense of their history. What’s the present of Bournemouth? Will you now see who’s playing best for them this season? Who’s their top scorer? Who’s their manager? What transfers have they made? And then what’s the future for Bournemouth? Who’s the next match against? What’s the news that’s going on with Bournemouth at the moment? Are they in transfer negotiations for a player that might be coming in? And we try to apply that thinking to kind of everything — competitions, players, clubs, as I mentioned, to kind of bring that sense of emerging and that sense of kind of narrative to the forefront. Because what that does is it allows for the theatre of the mind that’s so important and those emergent narratives that are such a big part of a Football Manager. We’ve also tried to reinforce that with a little bit more direct, straight to source with news stories and news content this year. We were thinking about the phases of the football season quite a lot this year and how, you know, the first eight weeks of the season, you’ll see very different news stories to the middle of the season and the last, you know, eight weeks of the season. So you’ll see really in-depth club season previews now that give you that picture of, you know, this team’s got a new manager and then they’re in Europe for the first time. What’s going on over there? And then as you move through the season, you might go, oh, that manager’s under pressure and I wasn’t anticipating that. You know, are they going to get sacked? Aren’t they going to get sacked right to the end of the season? Who’s going to win the league? Who’s getting relegated? Who’s overperforming? Who’s underperforming? We’re trying to get that front and center as well. So you’ve got the emergent narrative and then you’ve got the narratives that we can actually tell in game too.

JOE SKREBELS: Nice. And we mentioned that the PC version of the game is coming on October 29th and that the console version is coming on November 10th, both to Game Pass. So you have plenty of choice depending on what platform you own. But if you had both, can you sort of break down the differences between those two versions for us?

ANT FARLEY: Sure. I mean, ultimately, they both offer the same core experience. Which is, if you think you know better than a real football manager, you can go and prove it in either game. But the console version, we would say, is a little bit more streamlined and it’s a little bit faster pace. The PC version is one where we’ve introduced some new options, in fact, for trying to articulate the pace of your gameplay, what happens when you press continue. You might want to fly through matches very quickly or we’ve got a more comprehensive mode, which will take you to different sort of game areas to kind of allow for those emergent narratives that we just spoke about. But yeah, the console version has some unique features as well that aren’t on the PC version and vice versa. Console has a notion of pivotal moments, which is kind of putting some of these sort of more drastic player choices front and center, which is a nice cool bit of gameplay. They also operate under a more visual version pillar, which means that maybe there’s some analysis or some statistics in the PC version that are kind of a little bit more numerical. The console version might find a more visual way of communicating that information. Regardless of which choice you make, you should still get that same core offering, but just slightly different flavors.

JOE SKREBELS: Nice. And I’d love to finish up with just a few classic quickfire Football Manager questions. To start with, do you have a go-to club you always start a save with? Is it Man United or do you have a smaller club that you tend to pick?

ANT FARLEY: I typically will manage as Manchester United during the development cycle.

JOE SKREBELS: Okay.

ANT FARLEY: When we’ve locked for release, I’ll then start my proper save. I’m thinking maybe Middlesbrough this year might be my save. That would be a good option. But the allure of Coventry in the Premier League is quite big for me this year as well. That challenge of staying in the Premier League is really quite appealing to me, I think.

JOE SKREBELS: That’s great. Is there a player that sticks out as someone that you would always sign?

ANT FARLEY: There’s so many. I’ve got a very self-imposed rule that I will not buy a player that has less than 15 for work rate. [ Laughter ]

JOE SKREBELS: That’s a good rule, yeah. Okay.

ANT FARLEY: So high work rate players are always particularly appealing. Patrick Berg at Bodo/Glimt. The one that’s got all of the mental attributes that I’m looking for, for leadership, and for work rate and for being that character in the dressing room that I want everyone to look up to. Keane Lewis-Potter at Brentford.

JOE SKREBELS: Oh, yeah.

ANT FARLEY: He’s done excellent for me on a few saves, but he’s now a little bit less attainable now that he’s playing in the Premier League. But high work rate, that’s what I’m looking for.

JOE SKREBELS: That’s good. We talked about Newgens and how you create footballing communities as the game goes on. Some of those names are incredible. I’d love to know if you have any favourite Newgen names.

ANT FARLEY: I had love at first sight, I’m going to describe it actually, with a Newgen that I had in a Crystal Palace save a few seasons ago. I’ll reveal the name at the end.

JOE SKREBELS: (Laughter) Okay.

ANT FARLEY: Came through, he was what you’d describe as a diminutive winger. I think he was five foot five, so short of stature, very low strength, but had that work rate that I look for. Had determination, 20 determination, and his crosses were absolutely unbelievable. Fantastic crosser, so he had everything that I was looking for as well. Cherry on the cake was his name was Billy Whips. [ Laughter ] That is good. So Billy Whips, I think very fondly of.

JOE SKREBELS: I love that. I’d love to know what you consider to be your greatest Football Manager achievement in-game, as opposed to creating Football Managers.

ANT FARLEY: I also had a very good save in FM26. I had an Aberdeen save that I broke the old firm dominance. I won the title in Scotland.

JOE SKREBELS: You did what Hearts couldn’t do. And got to the knockouts in the Champions League as well. So that was a real big achievement. That is pretty good.

ANT FARLEY: Way, way, way, way back in the day, again, before I was working here, and again, I guess a testament to our database. But when Cesc Fabregas and Andres Iniesta were kind of just youngsters at Barcelona and hadn’t gone on to have the careers they were having, I took them both to Charlton, and they became the best midfield in world football.

JOE SKREBELS: (Laughter). Incredible.

ANT FARLEY: World domination with Charlton was pretty good going.

JOE SKREBELS: Well, can you, listener/viewer, beat world domination with Charlton? You can find out in Football Manager 27, coming out on October 29th on XBOX on PC and XBOX consoles on November 10th, both with Game Pass. All that remains to say is thank you for joining us, Ant.

ANT FARLEY: Thank you for having me.

JOE SKREBELS: We’ll see you next time on the official XBOX podcast. Thank you very much. [ XBOX sound ]

The post Football Manager 27: The Real World of Football Meets Your Digital Decisions | Official XBOX Podcast appeared first on XBOX Wire.

Ahead of the latest entry’s launch for XBOX on PC and XBOX Series X|S – with both versions available with Game Pass – I spoke to Sports Interactive Senior Features Manager, Ant Farley on the Official XBOX Podcast about how the game caters to new players as well as die-hard fans. If you’re looking to step into the dugout for the first time, here’s how you can make your managerial debut with confidence:

Preparation and Delegation

The joy and the challenge of Football Manager is that it offers the ability to do almost everything a real-life manager does: “It’s more of a strategy simulation title than an action title,” explains Farley. “You’re not controlling the players – really it’s about the core areas of what a real life football manager or head coach does: They’re making transfers, buying new players, training their team, setting the tactics, managing finances and budgets. What we’re trying to do is simulate the job of a real football manager.”

But with that breadth comes complexity, and there are measures in place to help players take on what they’d like to play with. “We have a lot of in-game sort of mechanics that help with that onboarding,” Farley continues. “Let’s just say you’re new to the game and buying players is something that really excites you – but maybe the training, not so much. That might be something you want to get around to a little bit later into your journey. We have the option to delegate that to your staff members.

“So you can kind of tailor their experience that you want from it. You could play an FM save where all you’re doing is picking your tactics and playing the matches, or you can really go into the big detail of taking care of everything, micromanaging every element of what goes on at your football club. We give you those options.”

Sideline Shouts

Football Manager 27 has a new feature that can further help players to achieve what they want without navigating multiple menus mid-match: “We’ve introduced a cool new feature called Tactical Tweaks this year, which I think will be really helpful for people that don’t know football that well or don’t know FM that well,” Farley explains. “The tactical side of the match simulation can be a bit intimidating, so what we’ve done with Tactical Tweaks is effectively give you a single button to press that will make multiple changes.”

Developed after talking with real-life professionals, the new system is designed to better emulate what it feels like to be a manager barking orders to your players amid the din of a stadium. “What that button’s doing is making a bunch of different tactical changes in the system, but you’re not having to navigate those menus. And crucially, you’re doing that from the touchline, so you feel a lot more of an active participant in those matches.”

Practice Patience

The thing about Football Manager is that, by emulating the real-life game, it also emulates its pure unpredictability. As Farley puts it: “We’re in a maybe unique position as a game where you can kind of make all of the right choices and all the right decisions and still lose the game, right? That’s how football is.”

But that in turn means that a new a player could be left a little lost about whether they’re doing the right thing. In part, fixing that is about helping to ensure they know all the tools at their disposal:

“We’ve got this big, complicated beast, but we want to make sure that it’s not unfriendly,” explains Farley. “A lot of the redesigns that we took in place when we moved to Unity Engine [in last year’s game] were about trying to make it a little bit more friendly as an experience. That can be handled relatively well with in-game tutorials, and there are a lot of great content creators out there that put videos together that explain kind of how to do what you’re looking to do in the game.”

But Farley’s top tip is more unexpected – be patient. Just like a manager stepping into a new team, things might take a little while to gel. “Football is a game of marginal gains, right? So when that penny drops and you start getting to that reward of doing well – seeing the team you support grow and run up the leagues, or maybe taking a plucky underdog and killing a giant in a Cup game – that’s where you really start to learn the appeal of the game at that point. So if you’ve not got a pre-existing relationship with football, I think that requires a level of patience.”

Pick Your Platform

Football Manager 27 comes in two forms, with both available through XBOX Game Pass. There are obvious differences – navigating the game from a mouse and keyboard or a controller offer unique takes on the game – but there are subtler, if not less important, changes between the two.

“Ultimately they both offer the same core experience,” Farley makes clear, “but the console version is a little bit more streamlined and faster paced. In this year’s PC version we’ve introduced some new options to let you articulate the pace of your gameplay – what happens when you press Continue? You might want to fly through matches very quickly, or we’ve got a more comprehensive mode which will take you to different areas of the game to allow for emergent narratives [beyond your club].

“The console version has some unique features as well that aren’t on the PC version, and vice versa. Console has a notion of pivotal moments, which is kind of putting some of these more drastic player choices front and center, which is a nice, cool bit of gameplay. [And there’s] some analysis or some statistics in the PC version that are more numerical, and the console version finds a more visual way of communicating that information.

“Regardless of which choice you make, you should still get that same core offering, but just slightly different flavors.”

Football Manager 27 launches on November 3 for XBOX on PC, with a free five-day Launch Preview beginning on October 29. Football Manager 27 Console Edition launches for XBOX Series X|S on November 10. Both versions will be available with Game Pass.

Football Manager 27

SEGA

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

Get it now

Every fan believes they could do it differently. In FM27 belief isn’t a hot take, it’s a story waiting to happen. Step into a living, breathing football universe where every decision is yours to make. Pick the team. Define your style. Spot what other managers might miss. Maybe you take a chance on the academy prospect. Maybe you sell the star who just doesn’t get your vision. Train your team to work as one. Build a tactical blueprint that’s unmistakably yours. Then lead your team out to admiration from the stands as you take your place on the touchline. Match day. React to everything the opposition throws at you. Beat their press. Fill the box. And throw the kitchen sink. Because footballing history won’t write itself. Every decision could be the one to change everything. So chase the vision only you can see. Whatever happens, you’ll remember the calls that got you there. Football Manager 27. Make The Call. What’s new for FM27? Experience a new dimension to squad building with all-new Tactical Effectiveness that measures how well-equipped your players are to deliver your footballing vision, while refreshed training puts even more focus on player and team development. Exploit the gaps you see in the opposition defence with Tactical Tweaks that deliver a new layer of influence from the touchline. Experience every fixture as a richer piece of football theatre thanks to upgrades to crowds, stadiums and environments that elevate the stage for your players to perform on. Sit defenders down with more attacking precision and expression, with flair and individuality taking centre stage to make it more rewarding seeing your tactical planning come to life on the pitch. Get lost in the wider football world that exists beyond your club with the return of Cup Draws and Transfer Deadline Day, mirroring the pace and drama of the football calendar. Flow through game weeks to glory thanks to an intuitive interface that puts key decisions front and centre. However you execute your managerial vision, customisation options mean you can tailor your setup to better suit your style. And discover much more, including new licensed leagues to test your skills in, upgrades to the 2D Match View, deeper data to power decision-making and more than 1,500 competition updates. FM27 launches on 10th November. Pre-purchase now for 10% off and Launch Preview early play from 3rd November. *This version contains information that is still under approval process by right holders and may contain data that does not, at this time, accurately reflect real world data. For context, some club and player assets may be absent during this version.

The post Never Played Football Manager Before? Here are Some First-Timer Tips Before Football Manager 27 Arrives appeared first on XBOX Wire.

Summary

• Meet strange traders, collect haunting mementos, delivery mysterious packages and construct an eerie corvette in the spooky Halloween update, No Man’s Sky FORSAKEN!
• Summon forsaken traders at the edges of the deep-space outposts, and exchange mementos for a unique collection of corvette modules. Become a space courier and transport important packages with the new corvette haulage missions.
• Expand your corvette builds and design a spooky biomechanical ship with new habs, cockpits and structural pieces. Warp seamlessly from system to system by flying directly to the stars you see in the sky.

Hello,

Last month’s COSMOS update saw a huge uplift in XBOX and Game Pass Travellers old and new journeying to the No Man’s Sky universe to check out the space overhaul which COSMOS ushered in. A whole host of new discoveries appeared in the space between planets, players had the ability to own and customise their own space stations, and much, much more. Today, with the release of our next update, FORSAKEN, we’re staying in space but things have got a whole lot…darker! 

Vessels of preserved organic matter have begun to appear in deep space, concealed within the nooks and shadows of derelict hulks and infested space outposts. These haunted mementos have attracted a number of enigmatic traders from all corners of the universe, all set upon gathering the samples for their collections.

Fortunately, these strange opportunists are only too pleased to lean on the expertise of experienced Travellers and whoever has mastered the skills of salvaging such in-demand materials. Any brave courier willing to venture into these ominous treasure troves and salvage their curious bounty can barter with forsaken traders, exchanging mementos for unique, sinisterly biomechanical corvette modules. Spook up your existing corvette exterior, or lean fully into the creepy vibe and build a whole new scarecraft. 

And the macabre cosmetics aren’t confined purely to your starship. Determined scavengers will be rewarded with the grotesque new larva tank helmet, and may purchase the wriggling larva cannon multi-tool – for the right quantity of preserved grubs. 

As with all our updates, we couldn’t help but squeeze in a few extra features too. With the advent of FORSAKEN, we’ve added a number of lavish new corvette cockpits, seamless warping to the stars you see in the sky, a new minimal HUD mode for advanced players, a radial weapon select, package courier missions, and more! 

It’s been a busy year for the No Man’s Sky team, and FORSAKEN is their fifth major update (after REMNANT, XENO ARENA, THE SWARM, and COSMOS). We’re already deep in planning for what sort of craziness we can get up to in 2027.

Our journey continues.

Sean

No Man's Sky

Hello Games

☆☆☆☆☆ 10297

★★★★★

$59.99 $23.99

Get it now

Xbox One X Enhanced

PC Game Pass

Xbox Game Pass

No Man’s Sky comes complete with all major updates up to and including The Swarm. Inspired by the adventure and imagination that we love from classic science-fiction, No Man's Sky presents you with a galaxy to explore, filled with unique planets and lifeforms, and constant danger and action. In No Man's Sky, every star is the light of a distant sun, each orbited by planets filled with life, and you can go to any of them you choose. Fly smoothly from deep space to planetary surfaces, with no loading screens, and no limits. In this infinite procedurally generated universe, you'll discover places and creatures that no other players have seen before – and perhaps never will again. Embark on an epic voyage At the centre of the galaxy lies a irresistible pulse which draws you on a journey towards it to learn the true nature of the cosmos. But, facing hostile creatures and fierce pirates, you'll know that death comes at a cost, and survival will be down to the choices you make over how you upgrade your ship, your weapon and suit. Find your own destiny Your voyage through No Man's Sky is up to you. Will you be a fighter, preying on the weak and taking their riches, or taking out pirates for their bounties? Power is yours if you upgrade your ship for speed and weaponry. Or a trader? Find rich resources on forgotten worlds and exploit them for the highest prices. Invest in more cargo space and you'll reap huge rewards. Or perhaps an explorer? Go beyond the known frontier and discover places and things that no one has ever seen before. Upgrade your engines to jump ever farther, and strengthen your suit for survival in toxic environments that would kill the unwary. Share your journey The galaxy is a living, breathing place. Trade convoys travel between stars, factions vie for territory, pirates hunt the unwary, and the police are ever watching. Every other player lives in the same galaxy, and you can choose to share your discoveries with them on a map that spans known space. Perhaps you will see the results of their actions as well as your own…

The post Explore the Spookier Side of Space in No Man’s Sky: FORSAKEN! appeared first on XBOX Wire.

Summary

• Launching on XBOX Series X|S Today.
• How I built a shop sim without ever playing one, and added zombies.
• The real life origin story of the character of Robin.

The Walking Trade is out today on XBOX Series X|S. It’s a store management game set in a zombie apocalypse: you stock the shelves, set your prices, and serve the survivors who come through the door, then pick up a weapon when zombies raid the place. I made it on my own, and I made it without ever playing a shop simulator.

Starting From the Bottom

I grew up on tycoon games in the early 2000s. RollerCoaster Tycoon and The Sims were my favorites, and what stayed with me was the first time I played each of them without cheat codes (sacrilegious, I know). With no shortcut to easy money, both games gave me the feeling of starting from the bottom and building something from nothing. I wanted The Walking Trade to give you that same feeling.

Years later, I watched shop simulators take off. Traditional tycoon games work at the macro scale, while shop simulators stay with the day-to-day: the shelf that needs restocking, the customer waiting to pay. That depth intrigued me. But they are, by design, incredibly chill experiences, and the game I wanted to play had risk and danger in it. So instead of playing them, I built the shop simulator I’d want to play.

A Shop Worth Defending

I hadn’t seen a shop simulator really add combat, and a post-apocalyptic world seemed like the perfect way to marry the two mechanically. A shop full of supplies is exactly the kind of place that needs defending.

In The Walking Trade, you design the layout of your store, decide what goes on which shelf, and choose what to charge. Then periodically zombie hordes arrive, and you defend it all with melee weapons, firearms, or whatever is within reach. Once unlocked, the crafting station lets you make medicine, weapons, tools, and upgrades for the shop, along with defenses and traps to hold the zombies back. You can hire survivors to serve customers, scavenge for supplies, or stand guard, and it’s up to you to keep them equipped and motivated.

How you trade is your call too. You can help the community around you, or you can price gouge or murder customers for profit. Your reputation decides who comes knocking.

A Survivor Named Robin

I started work on The Walking Trade in October 2024. I was about to be laid off from my job as a software developer at an indie game publisher, and my wife and I had just found out we were expecting our first child. Around 18 months later, the game was released on PC.

On your second day in the game, a survivor named Robin runs to your store, fleeing a zombie. He becomes your first member of staff, and his arrival is how the game introduces both combat and managing your team. Robin is also my son’s name.

After the PC release, I watched players on YouTube and Twitch go out of their way to keep Robin alive for their entire playthrough. It was touching to see people genuinely care about him.

The Walking Trade launches on XBOX Series X|S today. Build your shop up from nothing, decide what kind of shopkeeper you want to be, and please keep Robin alive.

The Walking Trade

PlayWay S.A.

☆☆☆☆☆ 18

★★★★★

$11.99 $10.79

Get it now

Run a shop in the zombie apocalypse! Trade batteries, craft stock, manage your staff, and fend off undead hordes. Will you be a hero, or profit at any cost? Your choices shape your store – and your fate. The Walking Trade is a quirky, action-packed zombie apocalypse store management game where chaos and commerce collide! Design your shop, balancing space, aesthetics, and functionality. Organize shelves, set prices, and ensure customers leave happy – or at least alive. Customers aren’t your only problem – zombies invade! Wield melee weapons, firearms, or whatever you can find to defend your shop during raids and hordes. Hire survivors to scavenge supplies, serve customers, or guard the shop. Keep them equipped and motivated to reap the rewards. Unlock crafting stations to create weapons, tools, and shop upgrades. Build barricades, storage units, and even makeshift traps to keep zombies at bay. Be a benevolent shopkeeper or an opportunistic overlord. Help the community, price gouge, or even sabotage settlements for profit. Your reputation determines who comes knocking. In The Walking Trade, every decision shapes your survival. Build, fight, and thrive in the apocalypse—your way!

The post The Walking Trade: How I Built a Shop Simulator Without Ever Playing One appeared first on XBOX Wire.

Scramble Knights Online was not always a MMO – it started as a battle royale PvP game.

Every developer loves their game. Talk to an indie developer making a slot-machine roguelike or a senior-level designer on the latest AAA action game and you will hear their passion.

When I first joined Funktronic Labs, what I remember most was a development team who loved what they were making. Scramble Knights Royale (as it was called then) was a battle royale. It had old-school, top-down combat and you quested, slayed monsters, and looted dungeons while also fighting others in chaotic PvP.

It was nostalgic yet fresh. When we revealed it, the response was solid! Fans on social media immediately understood what we were going for. Then, we had our first public playtest. Players loved the world, exploration, and the sense of adventure. Something was connecting with them, but they were also frustrated with the battle royale elements. Lobbies had emptied out and a large streamer gave up after only a few minutes. “Maybe I’ll check it out some other time,” were their parting words. Commenters constantly said, “I’d play this if it wasn’t for the PvP.”

We went to work fixing the issues, but that feedback stayed with us. After three years of work, we had built a kingdom we wanted to spend time in. The question became: was the battle royale mode making the most of it? It was a hard choice, but our path was clear.

We went straight to work. My job went from marketing a battle royale to figuring out what it was I was going to market. The development team went from fixing networking bugs on a near-final project back to prototyping. Everyone was nervous, but there was also an energy that was not there before. We tried a lot of other PvP modes like Capture the Flag and Team Death Match. There were fun moments, but we kept coming back to the parts between the fighting.

I talked to one of our founders, Eddie Lee, after a day of testing prototypes. He took me back to when Scramble Knights was first taking shape and he repeated one line. “Adventure With Friends.” That was the foundation, the heart and soul of Scramble Knights. The battle royale mode let you team up with a friend and that feeling was there, but what if it became the focus of the whole game?

There was one prototype everyone wanted to make. We called it the “MMO-Lite” version, and all we had written for it was this: “You start in town, you post missions to a quest board, players sign up, ready up, and you depart together. You drop into the world with a quest, you complete it, you return and do it again.”

Making an MMO, even a scaled down “MMO-Lite” as we dubbed it, was the most ambitious of all of our ideas. It would require the most effort by far, but the world, combat, and art style were all foundations we could re-build on. Every meeting we always returned to the idea.

Every developer loves their game and we knew despite the task ahead, this game was ours. So we locked it in.

“Adventure with Friends” was the focus. We were going from a PvP game to co-op PvE with MMO progression systems. We needed better enemies, NPCs, quests, story, crafting, character progression, and more. The momentum was there and the direction felt clear.

We created the Town Square, a hub to meet up before an adventure. The world became a place you could take your time exploring with friends. Dungeons were now a cooperative effort. Returning from a quest with loot was not just a chance to forge better gear, it was a time to interact with others sharing the world with you, even if it was just emoting at each other. The pieces were coming together.

Soon it was time to re-reveal the game. It was not a battle royale anymore, so even the “Royale” in Scramble Knights Royale needed to go. How could we harken back to the early days of MMOs and let people know the game has become something entirely new?

Introducing: Scramble Knights Online.

“Adventure with Friends” became the tagline. In less than six months, we took the world and combat we had spent years building and shaped them into an MMO. We re-built the kingdom of Terracott as an online world for players to explore as a knight-in-training. Players can team up to conquer dungeons, slay monsters, discover rare loot, and return home to forge powerful new gear before setting out on the next quest together.

It took nearly four years of building, a reworked game, and a lot of listening to find our way here. We hope Scramble Knights Online feels like reliving the days of discovering a new online world with your friends. It’s an action RPG with nostalgic top-down combat and an MMO progression system, but it’s also a world where you can just exist and hang out in.

Scramble Knights Online is available now on XBOX Series X|S and XBOX on PC, and included with XBOX Game Pass. With XBOX Play Anywhere, buy once and take your adventure across console, PC, and supported gaming handhelds.

Scramble Knights Online (Game Preview)

Funktronic Labs

☆☆☆☆☆ 119

★★★★★

$12.99

Get it now

PC Game Pass

Xbox Game Pass

Free Trial

This game is a work in progress. It may or may not change over time or release as a final product. Purchase only if you are comfortable with the current state of the unfinished game. Full details on the latest status of the game, how you can give feedback and report issues can be found at https://www.scrambleknights.com. Welcome to Scramble Knights Online, an MMO-lite adventure! Embark together with friends on bite-sized, Zelda-inspired quests in the shared online kingdom of Terracott! Venture across an archipelago filled with dangerous enemies, quaint towns, puzzling dungeons, and challenges suited for a knight-in-training. Quests will have you face off against electric slimes, rock-hurling crabs, towering dungeon bosses, and other dangerous creatures in strategic top-down combat. Meet other players on their own adventure and team up against powerful foes, race for valuable treasure, or even clash in PvP invasions. After an adventure, head back to the Town Square to hang out, upgrade gear, show off your look, fish with friends, and prepare for your next expedition. Meet other online knights, squad up, and jump back into the action together! There’s nothing like clucking around with friends. Complete quests to earn gems, crafting materials, and rare loot. Forge powerful weapons, craft sturdy armor, upgrade your equipment, and experiment with new builds that fit your personal combat style. The more you explore, the stronger your knight becomes. Key Features * Online Co-Op Adventure: Play solo or co-op with up to 4 players in a shared online world. * Action Combat: Master a variety of unique weapons and abilities to overcome enemies. * Dungeon Diving: Enter Zelda-like dungeons to solve puzzles, find secrets, and challenge bosses! * Town Square: A place to socialize, upgrade gear, fish, and party up before the next quest. * PvP: Encounter other teams of knights on their own adventures and clash over resources. * Online Split Screen: Play local couch co-op online with a friend (not available in Beta test). * Chicken Mode: If you die, spectate your team as a chicken. Cluck. Cluck.

The post Scramble Knights Online: Changing Genres to Save a Game appeared first on XBOX Wire.