We first grew to know developer Koality Games aka Justin Mai when he released the boxing game Prizefighters (Free) on the App Store in late 2017. He’s been continually updating Prizefighters since then and for my money it is far and away the best boxing game available on mobile. Anyway, alongside keeping Prizefighters going, Koality has also been working on a new game. You can see from his pre-Prizefighters releases that he’s a fan of basketball, and apparently is also a fan of strategy games like XCOM, and so why not combine those two passions? That’s exactly what he’s done in the upcoming Hoop League Tactics. Basketball is a fast-paced sport, so it never occured to me just how well it is suited for tactical turn-based play. Here is Koality’s own description of how the gameplay will work, along with a couple of short clips showing a slam dunk and a three pointer being made.

“The game is played by taking direct control of your team’s offense, moving players around like chess pieces to create a high shot percentage for scoring a basket. The ball handler can dribble around with directional movement, pass to a teammate, or take a shot from his/her current position. The chance of making the shot depends on the player’s shooting ability, their distance from the basket, as well as the ability of the defender directly in front of them. Players have ratings in seven attributes which impacts the outcome of different actions."

“For your teammates that are off the ball, you can move them around for better scoring position or use them to screen off the defender for the ball handler. Each tile movement takes one second off of the shot clock and every action costs stamina so you’ll have to plan your actions carefully. If a player’s stamina gets too low their ratings will take a hit."

“On defense, your players are controlled by defensive sliders that dictate how aggressive they are at stealing/blocking the ball. Steals and blocks have risk/reward as you can either force a turnover or risk fouling or end up out of position on a failed steal attempt resulting in a high shot percentage for the opponent."

Because this isn’t an officially licensed NBA game or anything, Hoop League Tactics will feature randomly generated teams and players, but it will also feature tons of customization options. So it sounds like if you want to recreate your favorite team and pro league, you’ll be able to do just that. The game will include a full single-player Season Mode as well as pass-and-play multiplayer. Currently the game is running a closed beta test and Koality is looking for as much feedback as possible, so if you’re interested in testing this one out head over to the thread in our forums for more details on how to do so. A public beta is also planned for sometime next month, and if all goes well Hoop League Tactics should be finished up and launching sometime in December.