Operation Sports: First off for those who aren’t in the know, who are you and what are you working on?

Danny Jugan: Axis Games is a tiny indie game dev company founded back in 2007 and based out of Charlotte, NC. For the first six years, we focused primarily on browser-based Flash games, but made the switch to PC game dev back in 2013. We specialize in sports and role-playing games with our most popular games being the Hands of War and Axis Football series. Our development team consists of one person, but we get a lot of help with promotion, testing, and design from family, friends, and the community.  

Our current project is Axis Football 2015, which was released on July 15th on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux!

OS: What is your primary goal for Axis Football 2015?

DJ: Our primary goal is to bring a football game to the PC. The sim and sports gaming community has made it clear that they’d like more options and that’s what we’re doing with Axis Football.  

OS: The aimed passing system is a unique concept, could you explain how it works and a bit about the inspiration behind it?

DJ: The aimed passing system is our hallmark feature, and it’s what separates Axis Football from any other football game.  It works like this: during passing plays, instead of throwing passes based off of selecting receivers (i.e., Pressing X to throw to receiver X like in Madden), players will see a semi-transparent circle on the field.  The circle is controlled with the mouse (or right thumb stick if you’re using a controller), and it allows players the ability to specify the spot on the field where they want to throw the ball.  Accuracy and skill play large factors here, too.  The exact point where the ball will be thrown is will be determined by a random point inside of the circle.  Naturally, the larger the circle is, the greater the variability in terms of where the ball might go (i.e., less accurate).

Several factors determine the size of the circle at any given time.  The first is the individual QB’s accuracy rating.  More accurate QBs will naturally have smaller circles.  Second, if the player is running, the circle will grow larger, as throwing on the run produces less accurate passes.  Likewise, throwing across your body (e.g., right-handed QBs facing towards the right sideline and attempting a throw to the left sideline will be less accurate). The final factor is the distance the circle is away from the QB, though the scale factor here is less than the one applied for running and throwing across your body.

The overall goal with the scaling circle is to reflect the actual game conditions under which throwing accurate passes are made.  If you’re standing still in the pocket and throwing to a receiver 10 yards away in the direction you’re facing, you’ll make an accurate throw. If you’re scrambling left and throw on the run 50 yards downfield to the right pylon, you’re not going to be very accurate.

Two other quick notes: players have further control over passing by either clicking quickly to throw a lob pass or clicking and holding to throw a bullet pass.  For players who wish to use a controller, we’ve added a sensitivity slider that determines how fast the pass circle is moved with the right thumb stick.

OS: Undoubtedly, when people want to know about an unlicensed football game, customization is a top question. Can you talk about what people can customize within the game?

DJ: Absolutely! I’ll admit that we underestimated the community’s desire to customize stuff, but we’re working on it!  When the game was Greenlit, we had no customization in. But based off of feedback and requests, we’ve moved all team rosters (name, number, and race [black or white]) to external files that are loaded in at runtime. This allows players a bit of customization, but I know they’re looking for more, and we’re going to give it to them!

I have already hired a 3D artist to create a brand new player model for the game. This serves two purposes: to replace the really bad, low poly model that’s there now and to have a model with separate meshes (3D body parts) to allow for better customization.  With the current player model setup, it’s impossible to allow players to mod it, and I want to fix that.

The model is almost done, and we have a big Mod/Customization update coming that will be included for free.  It will have two main features. First, we’re going to allow players the ability completely customize all of the team’s uniforms (helmets, jerseys, socks, etc.). Second, we’re going to move all of the individual player’s stats to external files like we did with their names and such.  This will allow for complete control over which teams are good/bad, in what areas they’re good/bad, and to what extend they’re good/bad.

OS: What about the playbook in Axis Football 2015? How big are they and what is the driving force behind them?

DJ: The playbook in Axis Football is set up to give players exactly the kind of plays they like to use regardless of their playstyle. On offense, there are seven different formations with six plays each. Each of the seven formations offers a mixture of run and passing plays. On defense, there are also seven formations with six plays each.  The defensive plays offers a variety of blitzes, man, and zone coverage options.

OS: How does the season mode work? What kind of options are available?

DJ: For season mode, players will compete in a 12-week season.  There are currently no conferences or divisions set up, so the top at teams at the end of the 12 weeks enter a 3-round, single elimination playoff culminating with the Axis Bowl.

We have big plans for season mode, too. We know a lot of players like the GM/management side of things, and in the 2016 edition (or this year if the game does well), we’re going to add franchise mode along with a lot of off-the-field ways to manage your team.  This is on top of the loads of season stats that we’ll be adding so you can keep track of how well your team is doing in certain areas.

OS: Could you talk about the new weather effects in the game and how they affect gameplay?

DJ: We’ve added rain and snow weather conditions on top of the normal day and night games. These new conditions will affect the chance of fumbles, catches, and player speed in slight ways.  Our goal here, and with some of the other changes we’ve made, is to take incremental steps towards creating a more realistic football simulation.

OS: What kind of stat tracking is there?

DJ: During a game, we keep track of a variety of stats that the player can pull up at any time. Under the game stats window, players can see overall team stats like rush yards, pass yards, run/pass play ratio, sacks, turnovers, and so on for both teams. We also keep track of specific things that the user did like user sacks and user interceptions.

Under the player stats window, we keep track of individual player stats that are context sensitive to their position. On offense, we track player’s rushes, catches, yards, tds, etc. On defense, we track their tackles, sacks, pass deflections, interceptions, and fumble recoveries.

As I mentioned above, we play to take these stats and incorporate them into our season/franchise mode to allow for season-long stat tracking.

OS: As far as player attributes go, what kind of attributes are there and what is the goal behind how you rated players?

DJ: For each player in the game, we keep track of ten different stats that affect how well they do various gameplay activities (tackle, catch, run, break tackles, block, throw, etc). We certainly don’t track every imaginable stat some like games… but our system is extendable and it offers plenty of customization and variety.

OS: Lastly, what is the one thing you want Operation Sports readers to take away about Axis Football 2015?

DJ: If this is the first time you’ve heard about Axis Football – or even if you’ve been following us for a while, I would like to be very clear about something.  We know the game isn’t on the same level as others when it comes to a lot of features.  We know it looks like PS2/Xbox graphics if we’re lucky, and we know the animations are rather limited. It offers some brand new, really exciting mechanics, but Axis Football was made with a $450 budget by basically one person.

I’m not saying this to boast. At the end of the day, no one cares how many people worked on it or what it cost to make.  I’m saying that to show how passionate we are, and to hopefully give you an idea of what we could create with a real budget. 

I want very much to be transparent about our intentions and plans with this game.  We will reinvest game sale revenue back into the Axis Football franchise to build upon what we’ve started.  Trust me when I say that all of the small polish features that are missing bother us just as much as they bother you.  +

We want to fix them; we want to add tons of gameplay features; we want to amp up the graphics and visual effects; we want to allow for complete player, team, and league customization.  Unfortunately, all of those things cost money.  We’re selling the game on Steam for $19.99, which is admittedly about $5-10 overpriced. 

So why would a developer intentionally overprice a game?  The answer is that I believe in the sim and sports gaming community. I believe that they want better options, and I believe that they’re willing to pay a little more to help build something to make that a reality. 

TL;DR – We know this game doesn’t look amazing. We’re asking you to believe in us and support us by buying Axis Football 2015 so that we can funnel that money back into the game to add the features and polish that you want in a football game.