Hi, I'm Thomas, and I make LegendSim. We just reached an important milestone, 1,000 games played, so it felt like time to introduce myself. You can find me on X at @thtremblay.
Why I made this
As a kid, I loved making little games like this one. Some of them lived in notebooks, some in Excel spreadsheets, with a formula deciding whether my made-up player won the final.
LegendSim started the same way. I built it for myself, because it was the game I wanted to play. When I finally shared it, I was a bit scared. It's a text-based sports game, which is not exactly what most people are looking for.
Then people played it. And then they came back the next day to start another career, and the day after that. I'm still amazed that other people enjoy my weird little passion for text-based games. Thank you, sincerely.
A side project, honestly
LegendSim is a small side project. I work on it when I can, between other projects and my personal life, so updates come when they're ready rather than on a schedule. There's no studio and no team, just me.
How it works, with a few numbers
You don't play the points. You make the decisions around them: how hard to train, which coach to hire, whether to play through an injury, how to spend your money. Each choice changes your stats, your fitness, your morale or your bank account. The sim then plays your matches based on those stats, with some luck mixed in, and you don't see the exact odds.
Tennis Life currently has over 1,100 events with more than 4,300 choices between them. To be honest about it, some of those are variations of the same situation at different tournaments. A lot of them are written one by one. Cycling Life has 532 events and close to 1,600 choices.
Some events are connected. A choice you make at 18 can come back at 25. If a little cousin gives you a lucky wristband before a final and you decide to wear it every match, a sponsor might ask you years later to stop wearing "the ratty thing" on centre court.
There are also 40 achievements, and 10 of them are secret. They stay hidden until they happen to you.
My favourite events, and one secret
A few I'm especially fond of: the blister on your foot that grows "large enough to have opinions of its own", the junior who copies your serve routine and then hits a better serve than you, and match point on your own serve while you imagine a certain Swiss legend shaking his head at you.
And now the secret. Hidden in Tennis Life is a story with a clay-court legend called Rafa Nadales. It only starts if you're lucky as a teenager, on a rainy day, on a practice court. It then plays out over five events across your whole career, and your choices can end it early at any step. If you make it all the way to the end, there's a key waiting for you.
So, honest question: has anyone received the second key? Tell me on X.
What's coming in V2
I'm working on V2 right now. A big part of it is tennis itself: Tennis Life is getting more realistic, with new events. I've also been working on replayability, so that no two careers play out the same way.
The other big part is Cycling Life. It was the hardest part of LegendSim to build, because cycling is a team sport and tennis isn't. You sign contracts, you have a role in the team, and your job is often to help someone else win. Sometimes you're the leader. Often you're fetching bottles from the team car. The game counts both as real careers, and a loyal domestique can retire with a great legacy.
After cycling, the goal is to add more sports. I won't promise which one or when, but if there's a sport you'd like to see, let me know.
Send me your ideas
Since it's just me, your messages come straight to the person making the game. Ideas for events, a sport you want next, a bug, a career that went wrong in a funny way: I want to hear all of it. Don't hesitate, even if it's only half an idea. Message me on X at @thtremblay.
How you can help
There's no marketing behind LegendSim. Every player so far found it on their own or heard about it from someone else. So if you enjoy the game, the best way to help is to share it with a friend who likes tennis or cycling.
It's also more fun with other people. Play a career each and compare: who got the highest ranking, who won more titles, who lasted longer, who retired at 24 after firing three coaches.