The quest to make a great PC hockey game continues

pcgamer.com:

The last time a licensed NHL game released on PC, Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid was 11 years old, and Patrick Marleau was only in his 11th NHL season. It was a long time ago.

Where the Madden NFL games eventually came back to PC after going console-only in the 2000s, the EA NHL series continues to forsake us. It's not a gap an indie studio can really fill. The basic controls of these games can be replicated, but the appeal of the EA series relies a lot on things you won't find in most garage game development setups, such as player likenesses, official logos and arenas, and on-ice motion capture sessions.

You can't get any of that with the $19,000 indie hockey game Tape to Tape just secured on Kickstarter, at least not in 2022, but that's OK. Without any official NHL games, it's been fun to watch the PC sprout offbeat, unlicensed hockey games, which include manual control-focused Hockey? and Slapshot, retro Super Blood Hockey, and management sims Eastside Hockey Manager and Franchise Hockey Manager. (Managing a hockey team is not for me, I've learned.)

Newcomer Tape to Tape is a hockey game in the style of NHL 94, with somewhat odd cartoony art: The arena is a 3D model, while the players are paper doll-like sprites. The developer's focus for now is on a singleplayer roguelike campaign inspired by Hades and Slay the Spire, and I love the background lore: «Each hockey team lives on barren islands surrounding the main continent. Teams fight relentlessly to win games and the precious mainland resources which are only allocated to the most dominant teams.»

Tape to Tape's Steam demo doesn't include any part of that campaign, where players and equipment can be upgraded along the way, but lets you play one-off exhibition