About us
Strategic Designs Ltd is the market leader in creating accurate and in-depth horse and greyhound racing strategy games. Responsible for the ‘Starters Orders’ series and ‘Greyhound Manager’ our games have been acclaimed by the racing press for their realism and accurate reflection of the sports.
Founded in 2003 and based near Manchester in the UK our first product, ‘John McCriricks Starters Orders‘ (endorsed by the famous racing celebrity), was released online in 2003 and later published by Focus Multimedia and is still available in-store today. Starters Orders 2 was released in November 2005 and can still be purchased as a budget option via the website. Greyhound Manager was released in March 07 and contains many ‘firsts’ for a greyhound management sim including realistic races, breeding and betting. It can be purchased online from www.greyhoundmanager.com. Starters Orders 3 was released in 2008 and for the first time ever simulated realistic hurdle and fence races. Starters Orders 4 was released in December 2009 with all new graphics and a raft of new innovative features.
Our games are developed by racing fans and experts and designed for the racing fan. Our games are considered the best hard core racing sims available by some way and we have many customers who spend their days working within the racing industry.
Released in December 2009 Starters Orders 4is the latest in the Starters Orders series and features a host of features never attempted in a racing sim along with improved graphics and expanded world-wide schedules to include the UK, Ireland, US and Australia along with all the other premiere world meetings. Starters Orders 4 includes the most detailed and realistic races ever in a computer game. Every horse in the game (and there are up to 10 000 of them) is modeled using over 1200 separate parameters. This gives each horse a unique ‘personality’. Not only do horses behave like their real life counterparts but Jockeys behaviors is uncannily realistic too. Horses can get stopped in their run, pull up, jump fences, make mistakes and even fall or be disqualified. Jockeys can adjust their tactics during races depending on the actions of the other jockeys. Starters Orders 4 is a milestone for the horse racing fan and also the first game to accurately simulate jumps racing with races such as the Aintree Grand National and the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Strategic Designs Ltd., was founded by ‘veteran’ horse racing sim developer, Mark Loveday, who has worked on sports sims since the late 1980’s.
