Inside FC Mafioso: A Closer Look at the Core Features

A short overview of features

FC Mafioso is built around careers that can span up to 20 seasons. Each career is unique, as all club names, players, sponsors, events, and storylines are procedurally generated.

You’ll start by choosing the cultural flavor for your career: the game includes several name packs for different football cultures, allowing you to experience an English, German, Italian, Nordic, Finnish, or Spanish/Latin career, among others. The culture will define the procedural club names and, in player generation, emphasize players from the chosen countries and cultures.

After that, you’ll roll your procedural club and stadium names (or create custom names), then move on to roll your players and opponent clubs, and finally create your club’s kit.

Once you’re all set, the season begins by choosing a sponsorship contract. During the game, you will have lots of expenses, with player salaries being the biggest of them. The sponsorship contract will cover most of this, but you will need to generate extra income during the season to stay afloat. Finishing the season with negative funds will result in a notice from the FA, and three notices will get your club declared bankrupt and you fired. In FC Mafioso, that is the only way you can get a game over, so be careful.

Each week starts with one or more weekly scenarios, which will often force you to make decisions. Whether it’s a local schoolboy selling lemonade and donating a couple of pounds to your club, an energy drink conglomerate offering you big money if you change your club name to something disgusting, or heavy rain forcing you to choose an alternative training plan, the weekly scenarios will bring life to the game and make your club feel like part of a larger community. There are also longer, season-long scenarios with branching storylines, which make each season feel truly unique.

The Team Center

The Team Center view is your home for most of the game. On this screen, you can view league tables, look at your players, scout your opponents, view club history, read the local newspaper, and, most importantly, visit various offices.

The Coaching Center allows you to set your weekly training focus: will you focus on player development, matchday sharpness, or recovery? You can also purchase services like scouting reports, stamina-recovering massages, or energy drinks that are used in matches for a temporary stat boost.

In the Club Offices, you can invest in the club’s infrastructure, for example by improving your coaching, which will help your players develop faster. The Marketing Department has various services: you can add seats to your stadium, improve your fan shop to boost merch sales, perform a sophisticated press spin to improve your reputation, et cetera.

And then there’s Little Sicily, home of the local mafia. The mafia offers shady services including illegal gambling, bribery, doping, and protection. Whenever you use mafia services, the suspicion meter rises. Should it rise too high, a police probe will begin and you may face serious legal trouble, including fines and point deductions.

The Matchdays

Once you’re prepared, you can proceed to your next match. Choose your matchday squad, strategy, ticket prices for home games, and your press conference strategy. After you’re all set, the match begins.

The matches are presented as text-based live coverage. By default, a single match lasts about 50 seconds, but you can hold SPACE to skip the commentary, or select a custom speed from the menus.

The matches are simulated based on real stats, but you are allowed some limited reactions during the action, including using energy drinks for temporary stat boosts and making a substitution.

After each match, your players receive stat increases. The speed at which those increases occur depends on various factors, most importantly your coaching levels, which can be improved in the Club Offices. Each player also has a potential stat, which defines that player’s maximum growth.

After that, you’ll be able to view the other results from the round, followed by the weekly financial report showing how your funds and reputation changed during the week.

Extra scenarios

In addition to the smaller weekly scenarios, there are some bigger extra scenarios that occur from time to time. The season includes two transfer windows, which allow you to attempt to sign new players.

There is also a Midweek Trophy cup tournament for reserve teams, which is handled by your reserve team head coach. However, each cup round allows you to send some first-team players to assist your reserve squad, and if you make it all the way to the final, the final will be playable as a normal match.

Goals in mind

The main goal in the game is to climb the league pyramid and earn promotion first from Division 3 to Division 2, and then to the Premiership, where you can fight for the title. To reach the higher leagues, you will need to develop your players and manage your finances and club infrastructure. Your squad grows stronger with each matchday, and with investments and some luck in the transfer market, you can greatly speed up that progress.

The game also includes a global Legacy EXP system, which allows you to unlock various traits, multipliers, and cheats. You collect Legacy EXP from all kinds of actions, and you can exchange it in the game’s main menu for different unlocks.

Next up on the list

As mentioned in my other post, I have a long backlog of things to add to the game. Here is a list of some things I’m currently working on:

• AddedPlayer traitseach player will have a special trait that affects player behavior, development speed, etc. • Referee personalities and referee-related weekly scenarios • Derby mechanics, including special derby days, derby-day offers, and some hooliganism • Midweek Trophy cup system: a secondary tournament played with reserve teams • A morale system • Different formations in addition to 4-4-2 • Season-long storylines • Lots and lots of new and unique weekly scenarios • Mafia suspicion system • Fan shop revenue system • And others…

Wishlist now!

That’s about it! Please take a moment to wishlist the game, and as always, I’m happy to answer any questions.

– Tapio / Uncultured Games