1st & Bit: College Football

BE THE HEAD COACH. PROVE IT SATURDAY.

1st & Bit is a college football coaching game. You run the week. Saturday shows whether you ran it well.

You are not a cursor that owns every decision. You are a coach with a job, a staff, limited attention and players who have careers of their own. What you prepare, who you play and what you call all reach the field, and the game tells you why it went the way it did.

The week

Seven days, each with something to decide.

• Sunday. Read what happened: the week's front page, your game by quarter and by the numbers, who is hurt and who is back.
• Monday to Friday. Set the depth chart. Build the game plan. Practise, and pay for it in fatigue. Deal with the player who wants more snaps and the booster who wants three sacks.
• Saturday. Take the field.

Saturday

• Call the plays yourself on a 3D field, from a broadcast camera, with every player drawn full-body.
• Spend a look before the snap and hear what your staff think the defence is in.
• Or hand the calls to your coordinator and watch your plan run.
• Or skip ahead to the moment that matters, or sim the game.

A game of yours that you sim runs on the same engine as one you play, and so does every game in your conference. The table you are judged against was played the same way you were.

Your job is your authority

Take the job as head coach, offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator. The role decides what is yours to call. What is not yours is decided by somebody else in the building, not left undefined.

A programme, not a spreadsheet

• Recruiting with imperfect information and limited offers, against programmes after the same players.
• The transfer portal, where a player moves for a reason and solves a problem or does not.
• Development driven by talent, snaps and staff. Build a star and you may lose him early.
• Staff who change what you know, not only what the engine calculates.
• Money and boosters that turn into decisions before Saturday.
• Players with personalities your coaches read better the longer they know them.

The world

138 programmes in ten conferences, bowls and a playoff. Every school, conference, bowl, stadium name and player in the game is fictional. 1st & Bit is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NCAA, any conference or any university.

The game can also start a save from a league file you supply yourself. It ships only its own league.

Where it is

In development, version 0.1.1. It is playable through full seasons. Balance, screens and saves are still changing, and a new build can ask more of an old save than it has.

Not in the game, so you are not surprised:

• a coaching career that moves you between schools;
• an athletic director's job;
• real-time control of a single player.

Download

• Windows (64-bit) and macOS (Apple Silicon: M1 or later).
• The builds are not code-signed yet, so the system will stop the first launch once.
  • Windows: More info → Run anyway.
  • macOS: open the app once, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.
• Your saves stay on your machine.
• English and Thai.

Try it first

There is a free demo for Windows: one exhibition game, with a lineup to set and a plan to choose before kickoff.

Tell us what broke

Comments are open below. A bug report with what you did and what you expected gets read.