You don't control the players. You coach them. Chaos Gaffer is a real-time strategy football game where you build formations, manage player energy, health, morale and emotions, and make tactical decisions during live matches. A nerdy football sandbox for Gaffers who think they can do better.

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Coming Soon To Early Access

The developers of this game intend to release as a work in progress, developing with the feedback of players.

Note: Games in Early Access are not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

Leaving Early Access: Apr 30, 2027

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“This is a new Game Sub-Genre (Football + RTS).The early access will help the team clean out already established mechanics.
We also want to have a dedicated base which an early access will allow us interact actively with the participating base.
Another key important feature for the game is size and performance on low-end devices. To achieve this before a 1.0 release, an early access will enable the team iron out bugs and performance issues on various architectures and devices to run at 60 fps.
Finally, we intend to have a fully functioning and safe online multiplayer environment and an early access will help the team nib potential issues and connectivity/privacy issues regarding multiplayer gaming before a 1.0 release.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We do not intend that this game sits in Early Access beyond a year as most mechanics are already into the game. We however are conscious of the fact that game development can take longer than expected and the team will do well to inform its base if there is any changes to this well ahead of time.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“We plan to have the Below At 1.0:
- Stadium Editor (Customize Stadium appearance and aesthetics)
-Fully integrated Online multiplayer with Quickplay and ranked Modes.
-Improved player/Character Animation
-Improved Crowd/Commentary System
-Improved Career Mode
-Improved Player/Character Editor
-Improved Team/Editor
-Multiple Kit/Boots designs
-Improved UI/UX experience
-High Performance (60FPS) on low end devices
-Fully Integrated Training Mode (With Advanced formation tools)
-Other Improvements to Tactical Editor Tools
-More and Better Music”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“We currently have:
-Offline Quickplay (Human VS CPU, CPU VS CPU)
-Offline Career Mode
-Team Editor
-Tactical Editor
-Crude Tutorial
-World Cup Mode
-Gameplay Control Customization”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“The current Early access pricing currently reflects the state of the game. However, there will be a gradual increase in price when we hit 1.0 as it will be more stable and have more features for the game.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We have a Discord Channel for players to directly interact with the development team.
We also have in-game survey that can be used during to raise issues/bugs/reports to the team in the early access build.
We will also publish bi-weekly updates on features been worked on or finished through the Steam developer HUB and YouTube/Discord channel.”
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About This Game



# YOU DON'T PLAY THE PLAYERS. YOU COACH THEM.

**Chaos Gaffer (CG)** is a real-time strategy football coaching game built around one idea: **what if you could actually coach a football match while it is happening?**

Forget controlling a single player. You are the **Gaffer**. You decide how your team is built, where your players move, how they react to the ball, how they attack, how they defend and how they respond when things start going wrong.

But your players aren't machines. They have **Energy, Stamina, Health, Morale, Temper, Emotions and individual abilities** that constantly change throughout the match.

Your job is to manage all of it.

**Build your team. Shape your tactics. Read the match. Make the call. Then deal with the chaos that follows.**



# BUILD THE FOOTBALL TEAM YOU WANT

Most football games give you a formation. **Chaos Gaffer gives you a tactical sandbox.**

The **Team & Formation Editor** lets you go far beyond simply choosing 4-4-2, 4-3-3 or another traditional formation.

Football is a game of moving shapes, spaces and decisions. CG lets you shape those things. Determine where your players should be, how they move, how they respond to the ball, how they track teammates, how they defend, how they attack and how your team changes shape throughout a match.

You can use the built-in formations and get straight into a match, or go much deeper and build a tactical system that reflects your own football philosophy.

**If you can imagine the shape, try building it.**



# YOU ARE THE GAFFER

In Chaos Gaffer, you're responsible for the entire team.

You create your players. Choose who plays. Define their attributes. Determine their roles. Build your formation. Develop your tactics.

And once the match starts, **you coach**.

There is no hiding behind a formation screen. The match is happening in real time. Your players are constantly spending energy, making decisions, winning and losing challenges, gaining confidence, losing confidence, becoming frustrated and reacting to what is happening around them.

**Every decision you make can change the match.**

# BUILD YOUR PLAYERS

Every player has a physical identity.

CG features three distinct on-pitch player body types: **Small, Average and Tall.**

Body type affects the player's potential characteristics and behaviour, including Energy, Speed, Stamina, Strength, Response, Shooting, Dribbling and more.

But there's a catch.

You have a limited number of attribute points to distribute, so building a player isn't simply about making every statistic as high as possible. You need to think about the player you are trying to create.

A tall player might require more investment in Speed to compete with naturally faster smaller players. A physically powerful player might require different priorities from a technical midfielder. A winger may need a completely different attribute profile from a centre-back.

**Build the player your tactic needs.**

During player creation, you can redistribute their available attribute points and fine-tune them for their intended position, role and body type. You have a limited number of opportunities to modify their attributes. Eventually, those decisions become final.

Every player becomes part of your tactical puzzle.

**Do you create specialists, or build versatile players capable of adapting to different situations?**



# TACTICS ARE MORE THAN A FORMATION

Selecting **4-4-2** isn't a tactic. It's a starting point.

Chaos Gaffer's Tactical Editor is designed around the idea that football is about **where players are, where they move, and what decisions they make when the situation changes.**

Shape your team's behaviour around the movement of the ball.

Configure player movement, team shape, offensive positioning, defensive positioning, teammate tracking, marking behaviour, offensive behaviour, defensive behaviour, player roles and formation structure.

You can create a conventional system, recreate a real-world tactical philosophy or create something completely ridiculous.

**The choice is yours.**

# THEN TAKE YOUR TACTICS INTO A LIVE MATCH

This is where Chaos Gaffer becomes a very different kind of football game.

Once the match starts, the tactical battle doesn't stop.

Your players are constantly spending and recovering resources. Movement costs energy. Physical interactions can cause knocks. Passing affects confidence. Shooting affects confidence. Dribbling affects confidence. Poor decisions can compound while successful actions can build momentum and morale.

As the match continues, the problems you have to solve can change.

**The match changes your players, and your players change the match.**

# YOUR PLAYERS HAVE EMOTIONS

A player's attributes don't tell the entire story.

Players can experience changing emotional states including **Anger, Empathy, Fear and Aggression**. Their Temper can rise as the match unfolds, and their behaviour can be influenced by what happens on the pitch.

A frustrated player may need attention. An aggressive player may need calming down. A player struggling with confidence may need a boost.

**You aren't just managing eleven sets of statistics. You're managing eleven footballers.**

# MORALE CAN MAKE OR BREAK A PLAYER

Chaos Gaffer features separate **Passing Morale, Shooting Morale and Dribbling Morale** systems.

A player who repeatedly fails to complete passes can begin losing confidence in their passing. A player who repeatedly succeeds can build confidence. The same principle applies to shooting and dribbling.

Successful actions contribute to your team's corresponding morale resources, which can then be distributed to players who need them.

This creates a constantly evolving feedback loop:

**Success → Confidence → Better performance**

or

**Failure → Lost confidence → More mistakes**

Your job is to recognise which direction your players are heading and intervene.

# EVERY ACTION HAS A COST

Players don't have infinite resources.

During a match, actions such as running, passing, shooting, tackling, dribbling and physical contact can affect their available resources and condition.

Those costs are influenced by the player's **Body Type, Position, Role, Attributes and Current Condition.**

A tactic that works brilliantly in the first half may become increasingly difficult to execute as your players tire.

**Managing your players isn't something you do between matches. It's part of the match itself.**



# THE COACH WORK-BENCH

The Gaffer has another tool: the **Coach Work-Bench**.

During a live match, the Work-Bench generates resources that you can deploy to keep your team functioning. Every 20 seconds, you can generate one resource according to your current choice.

**Water** replenishes player Energy.

**Health Packs** restore player Health and help manage knocks accumulated during physical play.

**Milk** helps calm aggressive players and manage Temper.

Basic Water, Health Packs and Milk are generated at **zero cost**, but the Work-Bench can also create more advanced support tools—and those require resources.

# MATCH SCOUTS

Knowledge can be just as valuable as stamina.

The Work-Bench can generate three levels of Match Scouts.

**Level 1:** Know when your opponent changes their tactics.

**Level 2:** See live properties and statistics of opposing players.

**Level 3:** Reveal your opponent's formation and tactical setup.

But information comes at a price.

Generating Match Scouts consumes your accumulated resources.

**Do you spend resources understanding your opponent, or save them for your own players?**

# TEAM MEDICS

Your players can accumulate knocks and suffer injuries during a match.

Team Medics provide increasingly powerful ways to manage the physical condition of your squad.

**Level 1:** See your opponent's Energy and Stamina.

**Level 2:** Help injured players recover faster.

**Level 3:** Faster recovery plus increased player durability.

Again, these come at a resource cost.

**Every resource you spend is a tactical decision.**

# YOUR RESOURCES. YOUR DECISIONS.

You might have an exhausted striker, an injured defender, an angry midfielder, a winger who has lost confidence in his dribbling and an opponent who has just changed formation.

You can't necessarily solve everything at once.

Do you give your striker Water? Heal your defender? Calm the midfielder? Boost the winger's Dribbling Morale? Spend resources on a Match Scout? Or save everything for the final twenty minutes?

**That's what being the Gaffer is about.**

# TEAM SELECTION

Build your squad. Select your players. Choose their positions and roles. Then decide who gets the responsibility of carrying out your tactical plan.

Your formation is only as good as the players you put inside it.

# A NERDY FOOTBALL SANDBOX

Chaos Gaffer isn't designed to be a simple football game. It is designed for people who obsess over football.

The people who watch a match and think:

**"Why is that midfielder standing there?"**

**"Why aren't they covering that space?"**

**"Move the winger inside!"**

**"Stop pressing!"**

**"Push the defensive line higher!"**

**"That striker has lost confidence!"**

If you've ever found yourself doing that...

**You're the Gaffer.**

# EXPECT CHAOS

You can spend an hour creating the perfect formation. Tune every position. Build players specifically for your system. Develop your tactical philosophy.

Then kick off...

Your players are tired. Your opponent has changed shape. Your striker has lost shooting confidence. Your midfielder is getting angry. Your defender is carrying a knock. The space you thought you controlled is suddenly wide open.

**Now what?**

That's where the Gaffer earns his salary.

# EARLY ACCESS

Chaos Gaffer is entering Early Access because the game is built around systems that can continue to grow, interact and become deeper over time.

The core experience is here:

**Build your team. Build your tactics. Coach the match. Manage your players. Manage your resources. Adapt to the chaos.**

During Early Access, development will continue to focus on improving and expanding the game's AI, tactical systems, player behaviour, match simulation, animations, balance, performance, content and multiplayer experience.

Community feedback will play an important role in determining how these systems evolve.

If you're the kind of player who enjoys experimenting with tactics, discovering strange interactions, testing formations and arguing with your own players...

**Welcome to the dugout.**

# CHAOS GAFFER

**BUILD. COACH. ADAPT.**

**MANAGE THE CHAOS.**

**You don't play the players. You coach them.**

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Localization and Store page Marketing Materials use some form of edited AI tool

System Requirements

    Minimum:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 10
    • Processor: 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 or better
    • Memory: 8192 MB RAM
    • Graphics: AMD RX 570 or Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti
    • DirectX: Version 10
    • Storage: 2500 MB available space
    Recommended:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 10 or higher
    • Processor: 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 or better
    • Memory: 12288 MB RAM
    • Graphics: AMD RX 5600 XT or Nvidia GTX 1660
    • DirectX: Version 12
    • Network: Broadband Internet connection
    • Storage: 3000 MB available space
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