Erzac

Hi all,
 
I'd like to introduce GamePlanHockey, a browser hockey manager game.
 
In this topic i will be telling you my career story in the game from start to end (well hopefully there is no end). Along the way, i will discuss all the aspects of the game in depth, which will hopefully help you all to decide if it's a game for you or not 
 
If you like to know more about this game, i advice you to read this amazing and inspiring blog post of the creator of the game, Anders Granberg. It gives a good insight of what to expect from the game in general.
 
http://www.gameplanhockey.com/blog/why-another-hockey-manager-game
 
offcourse you could also directly browse to the main site:
http://www.gameplanhockey.com
 
Now, let's start a career!
 
 
1) The beginning
 
Like other browser games you will need to fill in a email-address, username and password to start playing gameplanhockey, but there is also one important decision you will need to make as a manager right from the beginning. You will need to decide which game world you want to participate in. 
 
 
1a) decide on a game world
 
In gameplanhockey, right now, there are 8 game worlds, as you can see in the following screenie:
 

 
All game worlds consists of 5 leagues and 80 teams. They differ in the pace of updates. There are 4 different pace levels.
 
Slow: 1 match per day
Normal: 2 matches per day
Fast: 4 matches per day
Lightning: 8 matches per day
 
P.S. Currently there is one game world type, which is the European style, but Anders did mentioned a second type in his interview with Chris from 3 Feb 2015:
 
 
So, all NHL fans have to wait a bit for the North American game world, but the good news is that it will be coming.
 
Since i could not decide on whether to play an European or North America style yet, my only decision to make was "how many games do i want to play per day". I decided to go for game world "Echo", which is a slow paced game world, meaning 1 match per day.
 
P.S. don't worry about choosing the wrong game world. After joining a game world you can always resign from your team and start a new career with an other team in a different game world.
 
 
1b) found a team, customize it or not?
 
After making a decision on the game world, complete the signup process and the system will start finding a team for you. You will be redirected to the following screen:  You will be assigned to a random team. It can be a team with already a history or not (it depends whether the game world is brand new or not). Here you can either take over the team and/or customize all the details of the team. You can customize the team name, city, logo and colours: 

 
I have decided to change nothing of the team. I am happy to start my career as GM of the Rio Grande City Bandits, who currently sit 1st in the BHL (Bronze Hockey League).
 
P.S. as a new rookie manager you will always start in one of the 3 lower leagues, there are 5 leagues, all have different promotion/relegation rules, which i will be discussing later:
Golden Hockey League Silver Hockey League Bronze Hockey League Iron Hockey League Lower Iron Hockey League   
1c) manager welcome screen
 
After you have customized a team and taken it over you will redirected to the manager welcome screen.
 
This is the page that you will see every time you log on to gameplanhockey.

 
When you see this screen the first time, you will notice a game hint in the form of a black box (see above). On every page in gameplanhockey you will see these hints popup. I advice you to read them one by one as it really helps you understand the game. You can disable the hints in the settings area, which you can access by clicking on action -> settings, as seen in the following screenshot, where i also clicked away the hint to see what's behind it  
 

 
Turns out to be a message box. Cool, here the system will keep you posted about all the news surrounding your team (i.e. match results, injuries, transfers, player awards, etc)
 
Well that's the start of my career and the end of this first post. I have signed up, joined a game world and signed for a team. Stay tuned for more...