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[lowpoly]

Hey all, this is Mini Hockey Champ! a 1-on-1 arcade hockey game I've been working on for the past 2 years or so. This game was born out of my love for the sport and years of playing classic & modern hockey games. The game made it through Steam Greenlight (back when that was a thing) and now it's coming out on Steam in November! This thread unfortunately didn't get a lot of love during production, but I'm more than willing to talk development and answer questions about the process!

Steam Store Page
http://store.steampowered.com/app/713030/Mini_Hockey_Champ

Screenshots











Video
Release trailer is up, make sure you watch it in HD/60fps!






Thanks for reading, check back here and follow me on twitter @lowpoly for more!

[waffler]

Looks pretty fun, reminds me of Hit the Ice by Taito. I used to love the early EA games, can't even imagine the amount of hours spent with friends on the Mega Drive with EA Hockey (and then NHLPA Hockey) in the early 90's.

[lowpoly]

A bit of good news to share, MHC has made it through Greenlight! Really excited to be able to put the game up on Steam when it's finished later this year.

@waffler Yup, definitely tapping into that old arcade vibe, with a healthy dose of Genesis NHL games (NHLPA '93 was my favorite).

[FineToothGames]

This game looks like a lot of fun. The visuals are really nice and I loved the little 360 turn the guy did in the last gif.

I'll be keeping my eyes on this!

[lowpoly]

@FineToothGames Glad you're liking it, more to come!

The past couple of weeks I've been working on getting fights into the game. I'm pretty happy with the first pass:



There's some issues with the animation timing when a player gets punched that needs to be squared away, right now he kinda flies back to early and ends up moving forward when the head whips back. The camera shake masks it to a degree, but it's an easy fix that I'll put in when I do the next round of animation down the road.

[lowpoly]

hard at work on the front end menus, something I thematically struggled with for the better part of last year and only recently came up with an idea that was both feasible for time and felt stylistically in line with the rest of the game. I decided on presenting the menus as part of a studio broadcast, the kind you'd see before a real game and often emulated in classic sports games:



The characters need to be rigged, animated, and have some sort of dialog system they can pull from to relate to the screen you're on. I think doing actual VO will be time and cost prohibitive, so I'm sticking with subtitles when they speak. The camera cuts to closeups in different sections and so far feels pretty smooth when you navigate through.

[traisane]

Excellent work! Looks very promising. I am a big fan of NHL series from around 94/95.

Do players have attributes (speed etc)?

[lowpoly]

thanks! Yup, right now they have about 9 different ratings that I'm trying to balance out so players and teams feel somewhat different when you play with/against them. Some ratings, like speed, directly affect the player but a few modify 2 or 3 aspects at a time depending on what's happening on the ice. Hoping that creates a bit of diversity for players that are evenly rated.

[lowpoly]

wow, I've really neglected this thread! But good news, the game comes out in a little over a month and I'm cranking away with final polish, bug fixes, and Steam integration. Also starting to capture footage for the launch trailer, so here's some 'a few months old, but definitely new since the last time I posted here' gifs:





This game has been an interesting ride over the last two years of development, but I'm really excited to finish it out and get it in people's hands!

[lowpoly]

About two weeks left before the game comes out, quickly finished off a trailer this weekend and set up the Steam store page:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/713030/Mini_Hockey_Champ/

Everything is coming together pretty rapidly right now, I have a very short list of last minute changes and additions I need to hit, mostly usability issues and then I should be able to launch the game at the start of November. This is my first release on Steam, so I'm pretty excited and anxious to see how that part all plays out. I also managed to squeak in right before the IGF submission deadline and while the game has zero chance to win anything, hopefully it gets some folks playing the game early.

[ardydo]

Heyo! Just a little something I've noticed. You could make it the camera snapping goes more smoothly when scoring/winning the match. The abrupt jump is too sudden and may even have side-effects on people with motion sickness (well, it did bother me). It's really small stuff and no real priority since you're working on release but just a little suggestion.

Hope your project turns out nice

[lowpoly]

That's a good point, I'll take a look at that... haven't ever really considered motion sickness. Thanks!

[lowpoly]

Productive weekend of work sanding down some of the last remaining fringe gameplay roughness. Here's the release trailer if you haven't caught it yet:





Should be getting final versions of the game's music from my musician this week and minus a few last minute tweaks the game will be ready for launch on 11/2. Last week my video card died so with the wait for the replacement not a whole lot of work got done, which was probably for the best. Right now I barely want to touch things in fear that any change might indirectly break the game or slip a new bug through to the release version, so I'm being really cautious with what I touch going forward.

[lowpoly]

And it's done, released on Steam today!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/713030/Mini_Hockey_Champ/

I've been on this site pretty much from the get-go, posted a handful of devlogs in that time, but finally I get to attach that awesome 'Done!' icon to one of my posts and I couldn't be more excited. Today was a bit more nerve-wracking than I thought it would be, but now it's out there and will always be a thing that people can play, so that's pretty great to know.

Guess I better get started on #2...