Announcing the v1.5 Beta for Mini Hockey Champ!, available now for everyone who owns the game!
If you'd like to get a sneak peek of all the changes to the game and help me test it out, you'll need to opt-in to the Beta by:
- Right click on Mini Hockey Champ! in your library
- Select 'Properties'
- Select 'Betas' from the menu on the left
- Choose 'beta - Live Beta Branch' from the 'Beta Participation' drop down menu
This will opt you in to the Beta and download the updated version of the game.
I expect the Beta to run for a few weeks and hope to have the update officially launched in October at the latest. You should expect bugs!
There are a TON of changes to the game but I'll provide a brief overview of the big ones:
- Updated skating controls so players skate faster, turn better, and aren't affected by fatigue until they're energy is in the red
- Goalies can make glove saves and freeze the puck
- Added one-timers for loose pucks and goalie passes
- The old deke/special move is context-sensitive now and reserved for skilled players
- Added poke checks as a way to knock down players without angering them
- Fights are optional
- Spinning/deking players can be checked, failed checks bump you backwards
- Added difficulty options
- Ratings matter way more than before, the bad teams are really, really bad
- PUX are a high-score/rank mechanic rather than an unlock currency
- All the old arcade unlocks are free now and available in all modes
- Champ brackets start easy and get progressively harder
- Completely rebuilt UI with support for high resolutions
Here are some known issue I'm still working on:
- AI does dumb stuff like skate away from or around the puck
- AI runs into your goalie too often still
- AI doesn't get agitated enough when you're being annoying
- Players can get stuck in animations at the end of the period
- Achievements might be broken, a lot of them are definitely invalid now
- UI issues on Steam Deck
And some feedback topics to get you started:
- Is Easy difficulty easy enough? Is Hard enough of a challenge? Too challenging?
- Thoughts on one-timers and poke checks? Offense and Defense in general?
- How do you feel about stamina and fatigue in the game?
- Do you understand when a fight is going to happen? Are there too few/too many?
- How do you feel about PUX scoring, multipliers, and titles?
- Do the new records feel breakable?
- Anything else on your mind...
Finally, I've added the ability for you to load externally-edited custom rosters into the game. I'll drop a post in the community section soon detailing how to do it but you'll want to join the 26k Discord to see what folks are creating!
Excited for everyone to try this out and hear what you have to say about the changes! Thanks for playing!