A few days ago, I wrote about building a hardcore football draft simulator in React where the RNG was so punishing that I couldn't even beat my own game using underdog teams.
The feedback was awesome, but I quickly realized the game had limitations. The UI was a bit basic, the performance on mobile had quirks due to third-party scripts, and honestly, the concept needed to be bigger. With the 2026 World Cup on the horizon, I decided to tear down the codebase and rebuild it into something much more ambitious.
Today, I’m launching the evolved version: 8-0.online. Here is exactly what changed under the hood and how I scaled the architecture from a simple draft tool to a multi-mode simulator with a 100/100 Lighthouse score.
1. The Core Shift: From a Single Draft to 4 Game Modes
The original "7-0" version was a simple randomized draft. It was fun, but it got repetitive. For the new 8-0 version, I restructured the state management to support multiple isolated game flows. I introduced 4 entirely new modes, including:
