What it is

Five on five basketball on a full court, at full size with its real lines and clocks, four quarters under the arena’s lights. You are one player: an athlete you make, at a position you pick (PG, SG, SF, PF or C), with six ratings that start modest. Your height and build lean you toward some of them. The camera is behind the play, so you always attack up the screen.

The showcase, then a season

First, the showcase: one short game in an empty gym, scouts from the league watching. Your grade comes from your whole line, not the score, and the squads that call depend on it: the better squads offer less. Pick one, and it’s your squad.

Then a season: fourteen weeks against the league’s seven other squads, every squad twice, and the rest of the league’s games are real games, played by the game itself. Your role (the bench, the rotation or starting) is earned: the coach’s trust moves with every game’s grade, and off the bench you come on at the 2nd or 3rd quarter. Train one rating a week. The top four go to the playoffs, the first to two wins, then the final; then the awards, and next year’s offers from your squad and others. A season starting, and your squad offers you the captain’s band. Records keeps your seasons.

Get hot

Make two in a row and you’re heating up; three and you’re hot. Your ring turns orange, your green band on the shot meter is wider, and your teammates look for you. A miss, a turnover or too long without a make cools you. Hot, a three from deep is the heat check: make it and you stay hot longer. The other side gets hot too.

On the court: pick and rolls, post-ups, the drive and kick and the give-and-go from the computer, read off your defence; Switch, fouls and free throws, the bonus, timeouts, and six fouls and out. After a game, your best play comes back again, slowed at the moment, and you can save a picture of it. The arena is full on all four sides, on its feet with most arms up when your side scores.

How to play

MoveThe stick, bottom left; it points your passes too
Shoot, pass and moreThe buttons, bottom right
TimeoutUnder the score
SettingsThe gear, top right

The buttons say what they do as the play changes. With the ball: Shoot (hold it, and let go at the top of your jump, in the green), Pass (point the stick at a teammate and tap), your move (Cross or Step back) and Screen. Without it: Jump (block a shot, or go up for the rebound), Steal, Call for it, Screen and Switch. How to play opens before your first game, and the ? brings it back. Settings holds the sound, who plays your defence, and, between games, Save a copy and Open a copy. Between games are The season, Training, Your athlete and Records.

On a desktop, click as you would tap. Or use the keys: WASD or the arrows move; J or Space is the first button, K the second, L the third and I the fourth; T calls a timeout, H brings How to play back, and Escape pauses and asks whether to leave.

What isn’t settled yet

It is one player: your teammates and the other side are the computer’s. A game is four 4-minute quarters, the clock stopping on whistles, so it runs longer than a quick game. On a near-square screen, a tablet held upright, the camera zooms in and out a little more often than on a phone. Leave the page between the showcase’s grade and picking an offer, and the showcase is played again. Your season lives in the browser it’s played in: clearing the site’s data starts it again, and Save a copy keeps it as a file. There is no gamepad support, the keys can’t be remapped, and it isn’t playable with a screen reader.

Build Log

Credits and licences

Built on three.js, used under the MIT licence with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Typefaces are the ones already on your device; nothing is downloaded. Cover drawn from the game’s own court, player and arena code.

Heated Hoops is original work by Launchway Games.