 PCM.daily is proud to be the first media in the world to announce Cyanide's new cycling game, Cycling Manager Online: Tour de France 2009!
A lot of you have guessed and guessed. Many guesses were at a cyclocross game, but as confirmed by Cyanide several times, it's not in their plans - the focus is still on Pro Cycling Manager.
However, Cyanide has several side projects. Two weeks ago, Dungeon Party was released, showing one of Cyanide's plans for the future: free-to-play games. Cycling Manager Online is the next title in this 'genre'.
Cycling Manager Online (CyM Online) is not only free to play, it's also browser-based, meaning that all you need is a browser (and Microsoft's Silverlight plugin for it) to play it. But what is CyM Online all about?
First of all, this is not Pro Cycling Manager. This is a game made from scratch. You make your own team of 9 riders (1 leader, 3 lieutenants, 5 team mates), decide the nationality, type of riders, etc. It's now your job to train the team, make sure that they use the right equipment, are fully recovered for the next stage, are motivated, etc.
You don't get to play the actual races, though. Instead, you plan the race in a pre-race tactic. You can decide when to attack, when to up the pace in the peloton, which classifications to go for, etc., etc. "Which stages?" I hear you ask - there's a reason why it's called "Tour de France". This game is going on during the Tour de France. The game will be launched on the 1st of July. This gives people a few days to learn the game (3 tutorial races) before the actual racing starts. Every day, today's stage is simulated, and people can then watch the replay, following an event tab, race situation and the profile.
Thsi does not mean that you have to sign up on the 1st of July, though. If you join the game after the initial launch, you'll basically just be playing in a different league (22 players per league / Tour) with other players who've signed up on the same day as you. This means that the game will go on until the 31st of August. Last day of signing up will be on the 26th of July.
Going more into the specifics of the game, it's not as simple as it sounds. There's several measures that you have to take care of. First of all, you need to train your riders on a daily basis to make sure that they get better. After each stage, each rider has to be rested, and before the stage, there's the equipment selection - and most importantly: pre-race tactics. Here, you can set tactics for reaching objectives (which classifications to go for), attack (early breakaway, on which kilometre to attack, how much work effort that should be put into the breakaways, etc.), defense (when to bridge the gap, force the pace, block the chase, etc.) and finish line (prepare a train for the sprint, etc.). You can also set tactics for individual riders to make sure that your leader gets properly protected, etc., etc.
And of course, although it's free to play, Cyanide doesn't do all this for free. As with Dungeon Party, there's things you can buy. E.g., you can buy a 'pack' which can remove the negative influence of 'form of the day'. You can also buy better equipment, a skill planner, massage assistant, etc. - mostly tools that automatize some of the things that you should do yourself otherwise. The exact prices for these tools are still undecided, but it will vary from c. 0.3 € to a couple of €.
Cyanide are expecting between 500.000 to 1.000.000 people to join the game. It'll be promoted on Le Tour's website as well as on France Television and the American version of Yahoo.com. And believe me, there'll be plenty of (money / cash) prizes to win, although these are yet to be announced.
So, how do you win? Well, not only do you compete against 21 other players. If everything goes well, you'll have to fight for prizes against 1.000.000 other managers. After each day, a number of points is given to you based on your team's performance on that particular day. In a 'World Ranking', you can see how your team is doing compared to all other players - so winning the Tour de France in your league only is not enough!
Anyway, not only do we have the honour of presenting this game, we've also been given 50 beta spots for our members. The game is currently being tested, mainly by Cyanide themselves, but from Beta 4 and onwards, the community is being invited. You can read more about that in this thread.
Moreover, PCM.daily can also present the very first screenshots of the game. These can be found here.
Lastly, feel very free to read Cyanide's official presentation of the game at this link (PDF file). Also, if you've any questions concerning the game, please ask them in this thread. |
