Launchway
← Play something else Open-world sports · Build 98 · Playable

Trophy Town

New in town. Pickup games are running all over: what did you play back home?

Trophy Town
Works on phone, tablet and desktop · No download · No account

What it is

You’re new in town, and the first thing the town asks is what you played back home: basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer or football. That sport’s regulars are one short, so the first thing you do is play it, starting a level up, with its coach watching. Basketball is three on three on half a court, first to 11. Make your athlete whenever you like: skin, face, eyes, hair, build, height and the number on your back.

Every sport has its own place. Hockey is on the Rink’s ice. Baseball is at the Ball Diamond, where you lead off and play shortstop in the field. Soccer is five-a-side in the Cage, where the ball stays in and plays off the walls. Football is seven-on-seven backyard tackle on the Field. All year but winter there’s two-on-two volleyball on the beach, and in winter the lake freezes for shinny.

The climb

Basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer and football each have their own way up. It starts with pickup games, and a coach watches them and asks you to a tryout. League games come round on the town’s calendar, and there’s a weekend cup, such as the Harbourside Cup or the Lakeshore Shield. At the top is the Town Trophy, against the Regional All-Stars at the Stadium. Each sport has its own level, and new moves come with it: a dunk, a deke on the ice, a bunt at the plate.

Each climb has a moment of its own: a best-of-three final for the Lakeshore Shield, a baseball league that can come down to the season’s last day, a derby against the harbour town, a homecoming game under the lights, and on the court, once you’ve beaten his crew twice, one on one with Jett for the court itself. Make a big play (a dunk, a goal, a touchdown, a home run) and the scorer celebrates with the rest of your side, and at league and cup games the town comes out to watch.

Pickup games can be Full or Quick, which is about half as long. League, cup and Stadium games are always full.

Between games

The town keeps its own time. The clock runs while you play. The weather comes and goes (cloud, a shower, a storm, fog, and snow in winter), and the TV at your place gives the forecast. The seasons turn, too, and the beach court comes down for the winter.

You walk the town. There are shops for shoes and kit, a barber, the Training Gym, the Harbour Café and the Lighthouse, which you can climb. You have your own place to furnish, and a stray from the beach can come home with you. People about town talk to you, ask you a favour now and then, and some will come and play, take you fishing off the pier, out on their run or into a game of H-O-R-S-E, or paint your portrait. Friends come to watch your games, and to your place in the evening. Rivals turn up to challenge you. Three goals a day pay a little extra, and games pay money for the shops.

The town notices you. From your second day, the Pine Street Post is on your step each morning, its headlines from your games the day before, and the town talks about it. The Stadium keeps a board of your records: most points in a game, the fastest goal, the longest hitting streak. As your name grows, kids at the courts wear your number, the Kit Room puts your shirt in its window, and a Town Trophy puts your banners up at the Stadium.

After a game, the result card can show the best play again (yours if you had one, a teammate’s if not), from a camera low and close to the play, slowed at the moment. Stop it where you like, move the camera, and save a picture of it.

The year ends with the Town Games, a week of all the sports. Take four golds and the Games are yours, and on closing night the town names its Athlete of the Year. Your team gets a name you choose, its own colours and a crest, and the Stadium’s trophy hall keeps every trophy in town.

How to play

  • Walk in townTap where you want to go, or the stick bottom left
  • Look aroundDrag; pinch to zoom
  • At a doorThe round buttons bottom right
  • In a gameThe stick runs; the buttons say what they do
  • How to play a sportThe ? button
  • Your best play againAfter a game, Watch … again, when offered; Photo stops it
  • Sound, Full or Quick, and your town in a fileSettings: the gear, top right

On a desktop, click as you would tap, and the wheel zooms. Or use the keys: WASD or the arrow keys move, J or Space is the first button, K the second and L the third. On the ice, J passes, K or Space shoots, and from Hockey level 3, C dekes. In town, Q and E turn the view and + and − zoom. M opens the town map and H brings How to play back. Escape closes the map or How to play, and in a game or a drill it asks before you leave; in a replay it steps back, out of photo mode and then out of the replay.

What isn’t settled yet

It is one player. Your teammates and the other side are the computer’s, and nobody else can join, on this screen or another. Volleyball has no climb of its own: it is pickup on the beach and one of the sports at the Town Games. Hockey plays as Rink Rattle does, with its own buttons in its own order and its own keys.

Your town lives in the browser it’s played in, unless you take it with you: Save to a file writes it to the device, and Load a file brings it back, here or on another device. Clearing the site’s data without a saved file starts the town again. There is no gamepad support, keys can’t be remapped, and it isn’t playable with a screen reader. An older phone may struggle: when frames come slowly, the picture steps down by itself, first to fewer pixels, then without the sun’s shadows.

Build Log

  1. Build 98

    Friends come to watch your games now, and to your place in the evening.

  2. Build 97

    Two more of Trophy Town’s friends have time for you between games. Kofi takes you on at H-O-R-S-E on Pine Street: make one and he has to match it from the same spot, miss a match and take a letter, five and you’re out. And Lou will paint you, if you’ll sit for her for an hour by her easel. Her painting of you goes up on your wall at home.

  3. Build 96

    Go fishing off the pier with June, or run a lap of the lake with Priya: two new things to do with Trophy Town’s friends between games.

  4. Build 95

    The people of Trophy Town now ask you small favours between games: a parcel to deliver, a coffee to fetch, an old glove to collect. Each one pays a little and makes you better friends.

Earlier builds (7)
  1. Build 94

    The grounds get stands, scoreboards and walls, and the game gets a new cover: the whole town of sports from above.

  2. Build 92

    The town’s buildings get real fronts: brick and clapboard, framed windows, shop windows that glow at night, and a Stadium with arches, banners and a grand way in.

  3. Build 90

    Trophy Town no longer assumes you’re a basketball player. A new town now asks what you played back home: basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer or football. Your first game is that sport’s pickup, the regulars one short, and you start it a level up. Its coach is the first to ask you to a tryout, and your first day’s walk shows you the other five sports from there. Towns already underway carry on exactly as before.

  4. Build 86

    Players’ feet now stay where they land. The legs had swung on a timer whatever the body did, so a planted foot slid with it. Now each player’s real movement is measured every frame: a planted foot holds still while the body passes over it, and the knees and hips are worked out from the feet, with a new ankle so a foot lies flat with the knee bent. Players lean into curves, step round on the spot, and land on bent knees, lower the harder they land.

  5. Build 81

    Saving your town to a file is a download, and a framed page without permission to download drops it silently, yet the game said Saved. Now it checks where it is running first. On its own page, or in a frame that allows downloads, it says Saved. In a frame that forbids them, Save can’t be pressed, and it says so. Where it can’t tell, it says where the file should be. A shared kiosk screen doesn’t offer it. A game should only report what it can see.

  6. Build 79

    At the plate, the pitch that ended an at-bat used to be called twice in one spot, Strike on top of Strike three, and words that came up together landed on each other. Now that pitch is called once, and a new word never appears over one still showing: it goes in just above it, or below with room, and never over the score bar, the hint or the count. Each word had been placed well on its own; they needed placing with each other in mind.

  7. Build 77

    Hitting was measured over whole games played the way a phone plays them, where a touch and a screen each arrive late by their own amount. A thumb a tenth of a second late reached base about a third of the time. The game began learning your tap: how early or late you had been on average came off before your timing was graded, and was kept with your progress. Your swing’s window grew by nearly a third. The same thumb then reached base about half the time.

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 town code.

Trophy Town is original work by Launchway Games.