Tape to Tape

This will probably turn into a Recommend with updates over time, but the game has a lack of polish and balance at the moment. You start a run by picking a team and a superstar. You upgrade the team throughout the run, and the superstar is forced to play in one position the entire time (1 relic can remove it). The core rogue-lite gameplay is good, albeit the upgrades are rather lack luster and most of the time boil down to stuff like +10 speed, +10 passing, +15 power, +35 OVR etc. Most of the hockey related abilities are generic for the genre, but their are also unique ones solely related to the sport which I enjoy like throwing a decoy puck or your stick. The game also has brawls, which is cool but from what Ive played ultimately pointless. It's flavor essentially, as well as giving you an unlock. Kinda like how Balatro has meaningless requirements to get unlocks (like discard 5 jacks in one hand), Tape to Tape does as well, but only a handful, and once you get the Brawl unlock their is seemingly no point in doing the Brawls unless you want free injuries, which you can just get from the Hospital with a buff alongside it. Fights trigger fairly often and it's never an issue to not engage in it, I just found it dissapointing that past the first one, Brawls serve no purpose. Weirdly enough too, only one party gets a penalty for the fight, which even if its the enemy, just feels unfair. It's especially unfair to the enemy/OP for you because unless you are trying to lose on purpose, it is nigh-impossible to lose a brawl since you just outright hit faster and harder then the enemy. (and can just spam uppercuts faster than they can block). The detection for your controlled players and AI in regards to picking up a loose-puck is AWFUL. 85/100 times, if you and the enemy AI race to an iced puck, the AI will get it and your player will skate over it or into the wall. I'm not sure if this is intentional and meant to promote checking the enemy, but this detection extends to rebounds and anything else you can think of. So unless you want to just check people all game, you'll have to let the enemy AI huck shots at your net when the pucks iced because you just don't get to pick it up as efficiently as they do. The uncontrolled players AI is also unhelpful. You will always be playing catch-up when you switch players (unless on a fastbreak) because the friendly AI plays around who you're controlling in such a way to give you space and not get checked/KO'd. So if you try dumping the puck and chasing it by switching to a player further up, you have to fight their sideways momentum to go forward because 9 times out of time they have moved out of the way of the iced puck. In general the detection for the puck is awful. You also can't really upgrade your goalie which sucks. You can get the #1 fan camper to have a bonus applied, but aside from that it's the only time you can upgrade your goalie. Every other upgrade related to the goalie goes to a player instead, like "Friendly rebounds bounce towards you". In the same vein, their is a single goalie upgrade that outright wins you a run if you get it. It gives your entire team Enraged when your goalie saves a shot. Enraged makes your smallest players hard to knock down, your slowest players faster then the enemies quickest skater, and everyone becomes deadly accurate with shooting and passing alongside a power buff to your shots. It lasts 8 seconds and given my previous complaints, the enemies will be getting a lot of "free" shots on your net, so you basically play the entire game Enraged. Every other goalie ability is so weak comparing it to this, like farting away the puck on a rebound, ensuring gloves saves don't produce a rebound etc. Why stop rebounds if you can get a fully Enraged 5 on 3 fastbreak every time the enemy shoots?