The independent sports game scene is growing every year. This growth has been especially noticeable the past few years in the football genre. Electronic Arts’ Madden NFL series has been the AAA football experience since EA stopped publishing NCAA Football in 2014. However, other developers have been improving their football games consistently year over year. One of those developers is Axis Games.
This past weekend, Axis Games founder Danny Jugan went on The League Crawler Podcast to talk development on the Axis Football series. During the interview, Jugan talked about how he believes Axis Football’s deep franchise mode can stand toe-to-toe with EA’s Madden series. “We’re 100% adding several features to our franchise mode,” Jugan says. In the podcast, he outlines a few of them. Axis Football 2021 will feature a Hall of Records, a heavily requested feature. The game will also let you check in on what other teams in the league are doing. Axis Football 2021 will let AI-controlled teams initiate trade talks, as well. “We wanted to make the league and the franchise come alive,” Jugan noted.
Axis Football’s franchise mode is in a good enough place that Axis Games can focus its development on other aspects of Axis Football 2021. Instead of putting heavy focus on franchise mode, Axis Games will focus on graphics and gameplay.
Making Axis Football Look More Like Football
“We are fully aware that our game does not look as appealing as current-gen sports titles,” Jugan said on the podcast. The developer talked about Axis Football’s focus on its physics looking like they make sense. In Madden, Jugan notices that players are sometimes forced into certain animations to maintain the game’s visuals. Axis Games want to avoid these situations by triggering animations in a more organic way.
Of course, with only a handful of animations in Axis Football 2020, players can look stiff and rigid. “In the past, we have had basically 2 different catch animations,” Jugan exists. One of the major changes coming to Axis Football 2021 is the addition of “a significant number of animations.” That includes reworking offensive vs. defensive line interactions as well as the interactions between wide receivers and defensive backs.
Axis Games will also be redoing its player model. The new player models will use technology to improve visuals and boost the game, to make it look more next-gen. According to Jugan, the focus this year is to make Axis Football 2021 “play and look more like football.”
There were no details about how far along Axis Football 2021 is, but Jugan does reveal some info on its eventual release. Axis Football 2021 will launch for PC on Steam, on Xbox and PlayStation, just as Axis Football 2020 did. However, Axis Games plans on releasing its first Axis Football game on mobile this year.
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