I’ve been playing VLH since its Beta test, and I’m totally addicted. (My team is Gramsci in the Avant Garde league.) The main focus is on outsmarting the other general managers by making trade-offs and planning ahead. To be competitive, you have to play every day, for 5 – 30 minutes a day. So, I can have a life and a job and still be very competitive.
Seasons only last two weeks, which means that the game moves fast. Each day during the regular season (the first week), you play a dozen or so games asynchronously, meaning that you play six “home” games against your league opponents, and they play six “away” games against you. Robots play the games for you if you don’t have a chance during the day. The next week is the playoffs, which – like everything else in the game – follows the basic pro hockey rules, with four best-of-seven rounds.
The really hard part is managing and training players – and their contracts, which have to stay below the salary ceiling. Players age a year every two weeks, and contracts move towards renewal. As in real life, those players you’ve worked hard to train and develop become much more expensive, so you have to make really hard choices…
I’m always very conscious of the other GMs in my league, not only because we exchange messages, but also because the teams come to have personalities that reflect their GMs.
The game is freemium, but you can play and be competitive without spending any money. If you do decide to make purchases, it feels like a good value. You can’t buy victory; basically, it’s a way to get back in shape if you’ve been busy with other things, or to get some extra momentum. For example, after a trip where I didn’t have internet access for a week, I was able to catch things up by spending less than $5.
After nearly a year of playing, the game stays fresh and interesting to me. It’s fun from the start, but the longer you play, the more interesting it gets.