Touchline Empire
126 hand-crafted clubs, 2,520 generated players, six divisions deep.
The problem
Football management games chase realism with licensed everything. Touchline Empire goes the other way: a fully fictional football world with enough depth to feel real - and a board-game heart.
The build
A football management game played as a journey: each season is a board you move through, where tiles reveal matches, decisions and events. Underneath sits a real simulation - 126 hand-crafted clubs across six divisions, 2,520 generated players with contracts and morale, transfers, rivalries, a youth academy, and a manager's office (morning post, telephone, in-tray) that makes the job feel like a job. All of it dressed in 222 hand-drawn pixel-art assets.
The result
Playable core loop - new game through to end of season - across 67 screens and 40,000+ lines of Swift. In active development.
The human bit
Every club badge, every division name, every one of the 222 pixel-art assets is original. No licenses, no shortcuts - a complete fictional football pyramid built from nothing.
Under the hood
Swift 5.9 and SwiftUI on iOS 17+, with a custom match engine and 287 hand-written commentary templates across 22 categories. Status: in build.
a look inside
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