Hurling Manager
A downloadable game for Windows and Android
Hurling Manager
Take charge of a county. Build a panel, pick your approach, and find out how far you can take them.
A management game about hurling, built around a match engine that plays the game the way it is actually played: puck-outs, the breaking ball, working it forward, and the shot at the end of it.
Manage a county
All thirty-two counties, across four divisions of eight. Fourteen rounds of league hurling, then a championship: two groups of four, semi-finals, and a final. Finish in the top two and go up. Finish in the bottom two and go down.
Every county has a shape. Some have a famous midfield, some a mean full-back line, some a keeper you can build from. Those differences are real, and they decide how you should play against them.
Win the ball, then use it
Two decisions, and you can change either of them at any point in the match.
Puck-outs. Go short and keep possession, but start deep and invite a press. Go long and contest it, and win forty metres if your midfield is up to it. Against a strong midfield, contesting is how you lose a match.
Build. Work it patiently and keep the ball, or go direct, cover ground fast and finish closer to goal. One coughs up possession. The other takes all afternoon.
A scouting report before each match shows how the opposition are made up against your own four lines, so the choice is judgement rather than guesswork.
An assistant worth listening to
You can appoint an assistant manager, and his ability is not a bonus to your team. It is how much of the truth you get told.
A good one reads another county to within a point or two and spots four or five things going wrong during a match. A poor one is out by eight either way and only notices the most obvious problem. With the seat empty you are guessing, and you will be a dozen points out.
Who is willing to come depends on your division and what the board thinks of you. Money only decides whether you can afford the ones who will.
He talks to you from the dugout while the match is running — who is spent and who should replace him, whether your puck-outs are being eaten, whether you are shooting from places you should not be. Before a match he tells you what to train, what to set, what to spend, and who to sign, release or promote.
Take his advice or ignore it. That gets easier to judge as you get better, and as you can afford someone worth trusting.
Train what you use
Four things you can work on across a season: puck-outs, defence, midfield, shooting. Each lifts the line it belongs to. Train your midfield and a long puck-out starts paying off. Train your keeper and you can hold a short one under pressure.
A panel that changes
Players age. Young lads improve quickly, peak around twenty-seven, and start losing ground from thirty. Veterans retire. Your academy brings through the next ones, and the strength of your youth depends on what you spend on them. Anyone who ages out of the U-20s without being promoted is gone.
Legs go during a match. You have five changes, and a man taken off does not come back on, so when you use them matters.
Injuries and suspensions are real. Lose both midfielders and your puck-outs suffer all afternoon. Lose your inside forwards and the scores dry up. The team sheet reselects itself around whoever is fit.
Run a county board
Team preparation is the biggest line on any county's books, and it is yours to manage. Income comes from gate receipts, a central grant, sponsorship and the county draw. It goes out on player expenses, on your assistant, and on whatever backroom you choose to fund.
Strength and conditioning to keep players on the field. Medical and physio to get them back sooner. Coaching so they improve. An academy so the next ones arrive ready. A training camp if you can afford it.
Finish the year in the red and you lose your certification, and some standing with it.
And a board watching you
You are judged against where your county ought to finish, not against the top of the table. Sixth of eight is a good year for some and a disaster for others. Three seasons of grace, then the clubs start asking questions.
Your career record keeps every season: where you finished, how the championship went, promotions and titles.
Watch it or skip it
Follow the match on a pitchside view with live commentary, running stats and the ball moving as play does. Run it at normal speed, push it to sixteen times, or jump to the result.
Full time brings a written report, the scorers, a rating out of ten for every player, the match statistics, and a review of the calls you made — what your puck-out strategy actually returned, what your build style did with the ball, and whether the season's training was ever tested.
What you need
Windows. Mouse only. No installation, no account, no internet connection.
Android 7.0 or later, 64-bit. Plays in landscape.
Your career carries on across three save slots on either platform.
An independent game. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or licensed by any sporting organisation. County names are used descriptively.
Download
Install instructions
Install instructions
Windows
There is no installer. The game is a single file that runs from wherever you put it.
- Download
HurlingManager-windows.zip - Right-click it and choose Extract All
- Open the folder and double-click
HurlingManager.exe
Extract the zip properly before running. Windows lets you look inside a zip without unpacking it, and the game will not save correctly if you run it from in there.
"Windows protected your PC"
The first time you run it, Windows may show a blue box saying Windows protected your PC.
Click More info, then Run anyway.
This appears because the game is not signed with a paid code-signing certificate, which costs several hundred pounds a year. It is not a warning that anything is wrong with the file, and it will only happen the first time. Your antivirus may say something similar for the same reason.
Android
- Download the
.apkto your phone - Open it. Android will say installing from this source is not allowed — tap the prompt, turn the switch on for whichever app you downloaded with, and go back
- Play Protect will then say the app was not recognised. Tap Install anyway
Both warnings appear for the same reason as the Windows one: the game is signed with my own key rather than a paid certificate. Neither means anything is wrong with the file.
The game plays in landscape. If your phone is older than about 2017 it may be 32-bit, in which case this build will not install.
Where your career is saved
Your career saves automatically as you play. There are three slots, and each one keeps a backup of the previous save, so a bad write can never be the only copy.
On Windows they live in:
C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Roaming\Godot\app_userdata\Hurling Manager\careers\
The quickest way there is to press Windows key + R, paste %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata, and press Enter.
You will find slot_1.json, slot_2.json and slot_3.json, each alongside a .bak of the previous write. To keep a career safe before overwriting it, copy the slot file somewhere else.
Deleting a career asks you to confirm first, and only affects the slot you have selected.
Moving the game to another folder or another PC will not lose your careers. The saves live separately from the game.
Controls
Mouse on Windows, touch on Android. There is nothing to learn.
Press Esc on Windows, or the back button on Android, for settings: fullscreen, window size, and volume. The back button also saves your career before it opens.
If something goes wrong
The game will not start. Make sure you extracted the zip rather than running it from inside. Check your antivirus has not quarantined the file.
A career will not load. The game falls back to the backup automatically. If both copies are damaged it returns to the title screen — start a new career in another slot.
Something looks wrong on screen. Note what you were doing and tell me. The game is laid out at 1152 by 648 and scales from there, so if you are running at an unusual resolution or a scaled display, that is useful to know. On a phone, the model helps.
Getting in touch
Bugs, questions and suggestions are all welcome. Use the comments on the itch page, and say what you were doing when it happened.
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