Frozen Cortex launched a couple of months ago with an unmalleable but very lovely single player mode, in which a story unfolded discretely in several places: during calls with coaches, in the commentary, and in post-match ‘broadcasts’. It was a highly convincing emulation of our contemporary sports world, but what it wasn’t was Football Manager.
Mode 7 have decided that maybe it could be, however, and begun testing a management update.
“We felt like Cortex’s single player had some untapped potential,” the studio’s Paul Taylor told PCGamesN.
“This release is about exploring a deeper simulation and giving the player more power to interact with the world,” he went on. “We’re looking forward to seeing people’s reactions as we think this adds another dimension to the game.”
The new mode fully simulates matches you’re not playing in, as well as introducing player bidding, a salary cap, injuries, player stats and AI strategy settings. There’s even a 90-team college league from which players can be drafted into the global league.
It’s pretty big,” wrote Mode 7’s Ian Hardingham. “Please play it and give lots of feedback so we can polish it up nicely for proper release.”
The single player update is playable on Steam for Windows’ “staging2” branch – which you can reach by right clicking on the game in your library, and clicking the ‘betas’ tab under Properties.
Once in-game, you’ll want to start a Global Cortex League save and select either Manager Easy or Manager from the next menu. Do you think you might?