Why I'm making it
October 28, 2026 · Drew
Hi, I'm Drew. This is the first real post on here, so I wanted to explain what Criminal Dynasty (or whatever name this might eventually be) is, and why I'm working on it.
I've played Football Manager for the last decade, sometimes to the detriment of my day job, and the thing that keeps me coming back has never really been winning trophies with the Man Citys of the world, but I love how open it is. I'll dig through some lower league nobody watches, find a kid nobody's heard of, sign him for next to nothing and then watch him turn into a real player over a few seasons before rinsing and repeating. The club grows as you go, maybe because you created some killer tactic or some fun meta you found online, or you just got lucky finding some North Macedonian wonderkid. It's fun just to see the world evolve and see where it all goes.
I also happened to binge the Sopranos over the last few years and started to think how it might be fun to play an FM version of that world. Make the numbers go up, but with your crew, see the world develop, manage people, jobs, conflict, and see where your career takes you. I looked all over Steam and never found one that does it the way I want, so I started making it myself.
In the game you'll start out in the 90's on the East Coast with almost nothing. You pick up work where you can, meet people and figure out who's actually any good, and over time you build something. The guys who work for you get better, or they don't. Some of them stay loyal and some of them don't. As the money grows the law is putting a case together on you too. It's slow on purpose, but the world feels alive and takes on that quasi reality feeling you get playing FM.
It's still in development and there's no release date yet. There probably won't be for a while either, but if you want to follow along, sign up and I'll send an update when I have something worth showing. I'll probably be looking for feedback or early play testers once I feel good about having something to show in the somewhat near future, so if any of this sounds interesting and you might want to play that, you could be the one to give direct feedback!