Recently we got to try our hands at a manager-style title, developed by ‘The Tiny Digital Factory’ called GT Manager. A popular mobile game, GT Manager gained traction and has now grown into PC Gaming, via early access.
On the bigger devices, it hopes to take on other sports management titles such as F1 Manager and is even perhaps setting its sights on the great heights of Football Manager in the not-too-distant future.
Successful on portable machines, the studio decided to vastly expand its offering to PC users when the title was released earlier this month.
With a selection of car classes available including the popular GT3 and Hypercar classes, and a range of official licenses including BMW and Porsche motorsport badges present in the title, the game looks to add some much-needed variety to a sometimes stale motorsport management industry.
Traxion Motors – the next Oreca?
The game starts with you choosing your team name, limited to 14 characters, and thus ‘Traxion Motors’ was born. Next, you ‘enter the track’, picking from an initial selection of GT4 cars and a small pool of drivers, team and race sponsors – each with their own bonus for performing to their chosen criteria
Next, it introduces you to the ‘Seasons Calendar’ consisting of 10 races from a rnage of 12 tracks, with each race lasting a scant 15 laps.
Finding the perfect mix of drivers from the four you select, pairing them up into their respective cars, you head out to the first round of the championship – now getting to tackle the on-track experience of managing your own GT Race Team for the first time.
Upon our first playthrough, and trying multiple different strategy choices, there seemed to be no real difference between how hard you ask the drivers to push the car on track.
You are provided with three options alongside an additional, limited-use, push-to-pass function. However, the only thing that really seemed to affect progress was how hot your engine, or how cold your tyres, got.
After multiple races, I was none the wiser as to what the optimum strategy was to hit the target position. I was simply policed by the engine and tyre monitors of each car, ensuring they did not heat up or cool down too much.
Visual hiccups
As with any motorsport title, tyres and fuel are something you also have to monitor, although it seems like the GT cars here have been given Formula 1-style rubber. There’s a necessity to swap them every few laps, and if not, you start to lose five or six seconds a lap, which felt unrealistic.
We suggest the development team instead focus on a ‘driver time’ system in lieu of the aggressive tyre wear as a key gameplay mechanic, which could be much more authentic.
Visually, it’s the perfect mobile game. But, we are playing this on our PC and despite not expecting the world from the pre-release videos, this should be better.
For example, in the pitlane, your pitcrew, most of the time, change thin air whilst your car is parked two meters further up or down the lane. At least with such low-spec graphics, you can expect a steady 120 frames per second on most modern systems
The tracks, although unlicensed, are very familiar to those who follow the real-world sport. Fascimilies of Imola and Silverstone, plus nice nod to the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve are present.
Unstable beginnings
Being an early access title, you would come to expect some bugs at this stage in its release cycle, however, we anticipated that the the issues we ran into would have already been sorted considering its long mobile gestation.
Progress was lost, and having to mourn the loss of Traxion Motors #1, #2 and #3, we finally got progress to auto-save when leaving the game on our fourth run. No obvious manual saving also had our nerves on edge each time we rebooted the game, hoping our championship-winning Traxion Motors #4 team was still there.
Far from ideal, and the overall experience so far feels underwhelming. There is a very short gameplay loop, with no real challenges or ‘hooks’ to keep you coming back after a few hours.
Work to be done
This title had only come to my attention with the announcement of its PC release and if I had not done any additional research, my overarching feeling is that this is a perfect mobile game, but still needs a lot of work to turn it into a true PC management title.
After learning about its origins, our opinion on the title was soured. As this is a title that had been supported and worked on for so long, then moved into the PC space with a price of £16.99/$19.99, we expected so much more.
If this was a complete game now, we’re looking at a 4/10, but it’s in early access and we’re keen to see how it progresses. As it stands, this is an interesting proof-of-concept, let down by the execution not reaching the heights of its immediate PC competitors.
GT Manager at a glance
- PC release, and port, of popular iOS and Android game
- Released via Steam on 18th September as an early-access game
- Licenced cars from GT4 to GTP
- Build a custom team, hire drivers, control race strategy
- £16.99/$19.99
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