You're the one holding the pencil
Pro Wrestling Tycoon puts you in the promoter's chair. You book the shows, sign the talent, cut the checks, and deal with whoever is knocking on the office door. Then you get to find out if any of it worked.
Each day is a turn. Your cards run, the crowd reacts, and the numbers come back: the gate, the ratings, who got over, who got hurt, and how much money you just made or lost. Meanwhile every other promotion in the world is booking its own shows, signing its own talent, and every so often coming after yours.
If you've ever watched a show and thought "I would have booked that differently," this is your chance to prove it.
Book the show
You build every card yourself, segment by segment. Pick the wrestlers, the gimmick, the finish, the referee and the road agent, and decide whether a title is on the line. Angles and promos keep a feud moving on the weeks nobody needs to wrestle. Leave notes for the road agent about pace, risk, and who goes over, and the sim actually uses them. Just don't expect the star with creative control to lie down for anybody.
Don't feel like booking every show by hand? Auto-book will fill a card from scratch or fill in around the segments you already wrote, and it knows to put the strongest match on last.
- House shows fill the dates between TV. They make money, build chemistry, and let you try out a pairing in front of a live crowd before it ever gets near television. How often they're worth running depends on the era you're in.
- TV tapings let you shoot up to four episodes in one night and pay for the building once. The catch is that later episodes play to a tired crowd, and anyone working more than one of them feels it. Title changes happen at the taping, but the newspaper doesn't find out until the episode airs.
- Touring takes the company out on the road for part of the year. Or stay home. Your call.
Every once in a while a night goes somewhere you didn't plan. A kid from the opener has the match of their life against a top name and walks out a star. The right talker on the right show cuts a promo that the whole territory is still talking about the next morning. You can't force those nights, but you can set the table for them.
Run the locker room (or at least try)
Your roster lives on a push board, from the main event down to enhancement talent. Move someone up and the crowd notices. So does everyone they just passed.
Then there's everything else that comes with managing people:
- Contracts. Handshake deals, written deals, lifetime deals. Raises, bonuses, perks. When a rival slides an offer in front of your star, you can match it, counter it, or call their bluff.
- Promises. Your talent will ask for things. A title shot, a better spot, creative control, a friend hired, a rival fired. Say yes and the clock starts. Keep your word and they'll remember it. Break it and it hurts more than if you'd just said no.
- Sit-downs. Talk to them about their attitude, their weight, their habits, rehab, or retirement. Whether they listen depends on who they are and how they feel about you. And yes, you can talk a retired legend into one more run, if they've still got it and they still like you.
- Discipline. Failed drug tests, broken house rules, a story that leaked. Fine them, suspend them, send them to rehab, or let them go. When it goes public, you decide whether to issue a statement, stay quiet, try to bury it, or hang them out to dry. The networks are watching how you handle it.
- Gimmicks, masks, and catchphrases. Characters go stale, so freshen them up. A mask builds prestige of its own and can end up more famous than the company, especially in Mexico. A good talker can get a catchphrase over, but say it in every town and it'll die on the vine.
- Backstage politics. Friends, rivals, mentors, the people the room listens to, and the ones who are miserable. Check before you put two of them in the same segment.
- Developmental. Farm promotions and dojos where your future main eventers learn the trade. Call them up when they're ready, or send a veteran down.
- The rest of the crew. Announcers, commentators, managers, referees, road agents, and trainers. Plus a company figurehead, the face of the promotion, who sells tickets and shirts if you pick the right person.
Stories, titles, and the long game
Matches mean more when there's a reason behind them. Start a feud and map out the next 90 days of TV: an angle here, a match there, the blowoff on the big show. Sometimes a feud gets so hot it doesn't want to end, so run it back at the next one.
Build tag teams and stables, and watch their chemistry grow (it grows faster on the road than on TV). Create championships with their own rules and track every reign. Split the roster into brands. Keep an eye on the creative board to see who's on fire, who's ice cold, and who's gone stale.
Somebody has to pay for all this
Booking is half the job. The other half is making payroll.
You decide what kind of show you're running: how much comedy, drama, realism, danger, and violence, and how much to spend on lighting, music, sets, and pyro. The crowd has its own taste, and the era decides which tastes pay off. Set ticket prices, and watch out, because if you price past what the market will bear you'll be playing to empty seats. Sell merch, land sponsors, rent buildings, and choose which backstage perks to pay for, like catering, hotels, a trainer, or drug testing. Each one costs money and changes what your roster is willing to put up with.
The big prize is television. Pitch a single show to a network, or a whole slate of yearly specials in one meeting, and haggle over the time slot, the length, and the split. Lose the deal and the show goes off the air. When money's tight there's always the bank, but people do notice a promoter who's always there.
The business doesn't wait for you
Rival promotions hire, fire, book, protect their own stars, and try to poach yours. You can ally with them, trade talent, set up a developmental deal, or go to war. You can also play dirty and hope it doesn't end up in tomorrow's paper.
Independent promotions can band together into alliances with shared titles, supershows, dues, and votes. Every region has its own economy and its own idea of what good wrestling looks like. And the business keeps changing under your feet. The US, Japan, Mexico, and the British Isles each move through their own eras, and what drew money in the territory days won't necessarily draw in the TV era.
The newspaper keeps track of all of it: recaps, signings, injuries, scandals, even birthdays. Every New Year's Day there's a full awards ballot for the year you just ran, from Wrestler of the Year to Comeback of the Year, and a Hall of Fame that remembers careers long after they're over.
You're part of the roster too
You build your own promoter with 300 skill points across creativity, diplomacy, leadership, marketing, motivating, negotiating, networking, and persuasion, and you earn more by doing the job. Selling a network on your show and talking a wrestler out of walking are different skills, so get good at the ones you need.
Want to share a world with friends? Add more players to the same save. Everyone takes their turn before the day moves on.
Hand off whatever you want
Everything starts out in your hands. If you'd rather focus on booking and let someone else worry about contracts, ticket prices, and TV deals, you can hand off any part of the company: roster moves, developmental, storylines, business, cards, and talent relations. Turn on as much or as little as you like.
Pick your world
- Random universe. The game builds an entire wrestling world for you, with companies, wrestlers, and a Hall of Fame already full of history. It takes a few minutes. Portraits start out blank.
- Steam Workshop. Grab worlds and picture packs other players have made, or share your own. Mods and pictures are separate items, so subscribe to both if a world comes with portraits.
- Build your own. The mod editor covers companies, people, titles, shows, networks, venues, dojos, alliances, gimmicks, and the rules of the world. Import, export, and bring in a whole folder of pictures at once.
- Bring your old world. Convert mods from other popular wrestling sims. Companies, workers, contracts, title histories, teams, stables, relationships, feuds, alliances, shows, broadcasters, venues, and dojos all come across. Booked cards and the image files themselves stay behind. Pro Wrestling Tycoon is not affiliated with Pro Wrestling Sim, Grey Dog Software, Total Extreme Wrestling IX, or any other wrestling sim. Please only convert a database with its creators' permission, and credit them if you share the result.
A built-in default universe is still in the works and isn't included yet. Your saves sync through Steam Cloud. Mods and pictures stay on your machine.
Your office is open
Take over an existing promotion or start one from nothing. Who you sign, what you book, and how the crowd responds will decide what your company turns into. Become the ultimate pro wrestling tycoon.
