Franchise Hockey Manager 7

Franchise Hockey Manager 7 is the next instalment of a series of strategy games, launched in 2014 and produced by the German studio Out of the Park Developments. FHM7 is an advanced ice hockey manager with the ability to manage one of the dozens of official ice hockey teams (e.g. NHL).

Mechanics

As in previous parts, the primary aim of the game is to take part in matches and to develop strategies to lead your team to victory. The player can play matches in one of the 32 leagues from around the world. As the game is licensed under the NHL® (National Hockey League) the player also has the opportunity to win the final prize, the Stanley Cup®. FHM7 offers several types of game modes, including historical game, in which the player can go back to any year in NHL® history, starting from the year it was founded (1917), as well as control the chosen national team. However, if he is not interested in this option, he can always create his own league.

The player is fully responsible for the team he has created, from shaping the match strategy to overseeing finances, making transactions, hiring staff, signing agent contracts and doing everything to promote his master team. The seventh part also has a lot of new elements and expansions, which were not available in previous versions of the series. The game uses, for example, a new 2D engine, which makes it possible to observe the game from a new animated top-down view.

International games has been added to the historical play, allowing the player to control the team during legendary events such as the 1972 Summit Series or the 1980 Miracle on Ice. There are also more players from outside the NHL in the historical database, so if a player would like to see what the NHL could look like with the stars of the Eastern Bloc, he now has the opportunity to do so.

There are also more possibilities to modify a custom league, the developers have prepared a more flexible league setup - now the player can add as many leagues as he wants, all of them fully configurable.

Scounting System has undergone a redesign: the scouting interface has been simplified and made a bit more visually attractive thanks to maps showing the range of the player's team (and individual scouts). The scouting reports have also been reworked to display more useful and relevant information and the Scouting Levels are an estimate of a player's probability of reaching their potential.

When historical editing is enabled, the player can specify whether he wants to have options such as league foundings/closures, team expansion and deactivation. It can also decide whether changes to the rules are to be made as they were in history or whether they are to be made in any configuration.

A long-awaited function also appears in this part, which is that schedules can now be exported for editing and then re-imported. Waiver Draft function, on the other hand, was also added to historical games in the years in which it existed, as was its predecessor Intraleague Draft. Furthermore, both can also be activated for any other league type.

The message screen has also been improved to show more headlines and to mark personal messages or those requiring a reply. The actual career-totalling statistics are displayed in historical mod on players' screens so that the player can see if the athlete's statistics reflect his performance and efficiency from real life.

Player-led national teams are no longer deleting the schedules at the end of the tournaments, the histories of the international staffs are now being recorded, and there are various improvements and corrections in the UI to make the international screens work a little better. The success of the national team has an impact on the quality of the new players that appear in the country. There have also been improvements to the database, which contains an extended history of international player statistics, prize histories and others.

As before, a player can exchange players. However, selected players from his squad may be marked as "Untouchable" if the players do not wish to be exchanged. Similarly, he may mark players from opposing teams as "Not interested" if he does not want them to appear in the offers suggested to him.

The "Aging" function has been split into "Aging" and "Development Rate", which makes the player's career planning more flexible. Many new things can now be edited on the players, teams and leagues screens ( e.g. contracts, restrictions for foreign players, etc.).

Technical aspects

FHM7 has simple, 2D graphics. The game is mainly built around a set of tables and statistics, while the previewed match takes the form of a schematic, 2D animation.