The new three-week international break risked being a desert in football journalism – a 21-day void with little club action to talk about, and only the Nations League to occupy ourselves.

What it was though, was the perfect time for nostalgia and nonsense. That's why we chose that period to launch 442GOALS, an online draft game with a very simple concept. What if FourFourTwo… asked you to pick a 4-4-2… of players who have scored a total of 442 Premier League goals?

It felt like a sensible total: that's about 40 each, and naturally a few Harry Kanes and Mo Salahs will pick up the slack for your David Seamans and Gary Nevilles.

After all, the best games combine the serious with the silly – and this was an evening project that started with the ambition of building a dream team in which Edinson Cavani pales in comparison to Mark Noble; where sometimes, Paulo Wanchope really does trump Thierry Henry, when the Costa Rican's 50 top-flight goals take you up to the magic total of 442, but Henry puts you way out on 567. In the 442GOALS universe, all men are mostly equal – except for Alan Shearer, who will make or break your XI.

I scoured FourFourTwo's list of the greatest Premier League players ever and put all 100 into a database. You roll the dice and get three random players – enough to employ your ball knowledge, not too many to feel easy. Game done, basically – then I added another 100 players, and another 100.

I can promise you now, if you've played the game and found it even slightly addictive, imagine what it was like with the competition's history at your fingertips, and the urge to add new game modes, wildcards, Liam Rosenior and Arsenal's classic bruised banana kit.

It started well: the kind of viewing figures we get when FourFourTwo post a new Friday Football Quiz. Then I made a cup of tea, came back and it had doubled. Brilliant! I'll tweet about it and see if the people who follow me like it.

Then things got out of hand: 250,000 views in 24 hours, and then a million 24 hours after that. I've only ever gone viral a couple of times before – once was for suggesting that Kevin Volland's name was actually Kevin Vetherlands – so I really wasn't used to, or expecting, any of it.

My inbox flooded with strangers' scores. The simple words “Cheers, you've ruined my day”, popping up on WhatsApp every hour. I felt like an ethical Mark Zuckerberg, with all of footballing time and space my Ivy League.

The response has been overwhelming. It's just a game – but the best thing about it is the life it's taken on since. People are getting in touch to tell me their lowest scores (someone managed just 17 goals, picking as many flops as possible), while one Everton fan online is trying to build a team solely of Toffees.

There are people who have hit more than 1,000 goals, people who have found the one outfield player secretly eligible to play in goal, and people trying to build a team that could realistically win a title.

So while I can share my advice with you on how to tame 442GOALS – build from the back, and save the Scout's IQ wildcard for your final roll – it's not really my game any more. It belongs to the bored, to those on their lunch breaks or commutes. All that's left to do is thank you for playing.

We're working on the next project, for the next time there's no football on…