cyling4freaks

[The fridge in the blue trees]

Browsergame, cycling simulation, excellent game IMO. Ok, time intensive, a race takes 90min to 2 hours usually, but it's worth it. Text based, no graphics, but the "feeling" of the race is there. Fairly complex, at least in the beginning. Kind of a text based pro cycling manager, just better. Ok, better than PCM was in 05 at least... haven't bought any newer versions.

Basically it shows the race situation of every km, between kms you have 30", 1' in the end of a race/stage, time to adapt your tactic if necessary, tempo, attack, etc. K

Online since 2006, at first only German, then french added, right now still most users are german speaking. Now Italian, English, Spanish and Portuguese as well, although the translations not perfect yet probably.

Definetly worth a try. At least if you have time, because it needs time to play it.

http://www.cycling4freaks.com

 

[Tuarts]

Looks good, don't mind text based games. Will check it out

 

[The fridge in the blue trees]

Mmh anybody started playing this?

Time to make some more advertisment (and no, I'm not the developer of the game, just a user, ok, maybe one of the more fanatic ones)

After almost 6 years online still a fantastic game.

First: It's different from CFF and Velo manager etc. They are good and fun too, but in the end a different kind of game. Pre race settings, races cut in sectors, while cycling4freaks main part is the live race. It's basically PCM multiplayer without the graphics. And without material, mechanics etc.
So the big thing is: You race live, against other human opponents, you can (or have to) change your tactic, adapt your tactic every kilometer. The race is in table format, updates after every km. 1 km takes 30" in the early part of the race, 1' in the last 10-50 or so km of the race. Most races take 1h30-2h, can be shorter, but can be over 2h as well, MSR takes almost 3 hours. 2h42 minutes last year, just checked. It's possible to make some offline settings, but basically it's an online game, you should be online during your races (getting a sitter during stage races is possible). So it is time consuming, but damn good.
Now 8 language versions, German, French, Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Dutch and Polish. Mmh, that's 9. Even better. Not all translation perfect, or probably none perfect, corrections welcome, the boss then usually sooner or later gets around to correct stuff.

Race times: Between 8 CET and 24 CET, usually 5-7 times the same one day race, stage races usually offered 5 times... if there are 2 or even 3 parallel often less, since otherwise the groups get too small.

Price: Every race costs one point. The first month you get 20 points, after that 10 per month. (They expire at the end of the month, can't save them) In addition to that every day one of the 1 day races is free, costs 0 points. So if you can play at all times you can ride a race per day even without the licence. But, the licence is 10 Euros per year.... way too cheap still actually. And it's worth it, since the Big Boss isn't earning anything with it, but basically has 2 jobs, the one during the day when he's payed, plus his daily 1-3 hours in the evening when he's continuing to improve the game.

The game is complex at first, but by asking questions in the forum, the race chat or the ingame general chat, you usually get explanations and tipps pretty fast. Especially people with some cycling knowledge should normally get it pretty fast. Although you'll never completely get it... that's what makes it so good, even after 1000 races you still learn, even after 1500 races there still is no correct and incorrect tactic, because you're not playing against artificial intelligence, but against other human mangers.

Not all is perfect of course, development has slowed down a bit (Big Boss overworked), too many multi accounts around, not all ingame explanations really up to date, the conversation during the races is not always hyper friendly (you really get into the races, so...), bugs happen, but still a very very good and addictive game. If you have the time.

Try it!

http://www.cycling4freaks.com/

Ah, if you try it give your riders sensible/realistic names... not Argh Pffff.. and no "clones", Alberto Contadorr etc. since Alberto Contador has been used years ago.... ok, Contadorr probably too, by now you'd have to go for Alperdo Gondator or something like that after the 1000 clones he had...