Planned Release Date: To be announced

About This Game

Backcheck puts you in charge of a professional hockey team. You hire the coaches and the scouts. You sign, trade and develop the players. If the season goes sideways, that's on you.

We've played hockey management games for years, and we kept a list of everything that drove us up the wall. Backcheck is built around that list.

• Trades hold up. Rival front offices value a player by age, contract, role and what their roster needs. A star costs what a star costs, and when they turn you down, they tell you why.

• Prospects grow by what you give them: ice time, the right league, good coaching. Their own drive does the rest.

• Your save keeps working. Saves carry over from one update to the next, and a save that can't be read tells you why instead of crashing the game.

• Careers look like real careers. Players peak and fade on real hockey's curves, and we test the league's scoring, salaries and careers against the real game over decades of play.

• Goalies matter. A good one wins you games, and you decide who starts.

• An injury doesn't mean an hour of line shuffling. Your coach fills the gap, and you can take over whenever you like.

• The world is yours to change. Leagues, teams and rules are data you can edit.

• The games are there to watch, on a live rink, while you work the bench.

• General manager: build the roster, make the deals, own the cap.

• Head coach: set the lines, run practice, work the bench, and ask the front office for the players you need.

• Both: the whole job, from the draft table to the last change.

• A 32-team top league with two tiers of minor leagues under it, plus three junior leagues and college hockey.

• Nine more leagues with 124 teams: a women's league and eight across Europe and Eurasia.

• Every league's history goes back to its first champion. The records, the award winners and the dynasties are there to chase.

• Every team has its own front office, owner and budget. Owners grow old, hand the team down to their kids, and once in a long while sell.

• Seasons, drafts, free agency and retirements roll on whether you're watching or not.

• Rival general managers weigh your offer against their cap, their needs and the contracts in it. When they say no, they tell you why. Some days they call you first.

• Ask "What would it take?" and get the deals they would accept.

• Salary dumps, retained salary, conditional picks, and no-trade clauses that come with a list of teams the player won't go to.

• Deadline day plays live, with the phones ringing until the last minute.

• Entry-level deals with bonuses, qualifying offers, arbitration, offer sheets, waivers, buyouts and long-term injured reserve.

• The owner has a budget too, and your job depends on staying inside it.

• Players want more ice time, a bigger role, a contender or a way out, and they tell you.

• Talk to them. Promise a role, ask where they'd be willing to go, tell them where they stand.

• Every player has morale, and so does the room. Results, roles, contracts and how you treat people all move it.

• Name your captain and alternates, take a letter away, or rotate them. Get it wrong and the room lets you know.

• Hometown heroes and league-wide reputations change what a player is worth, to you and to everyone else.

• Send your scouts where you think the talent is. The longer they watch a player, the surer they get.

• The league's top prospect rankings sit beside your own scouts' list, updated through the season.

• The lottery, the combine, the World Juniors, and a live draft day with teams on the clock and trades on the floor.

• Prospects grow by what you do with them. The minutes they play, the league they play in, the coaches who teach them and their own drive all count. Rush a prospect or bury one on the bench and they stall. Handle them well and they can beat every scouting report.

• A bust or a late bloomer has a reason you can trace. You choose how much luck gets a say: even, random, or random only in the leagues you pick.

• A full coaching staff: assistants for the power play and the defense, a goaltending coach, a video coach.

• Systems, practice and rest: keep legs fresh through a road trip, or bag-skate them after a bad loss.

• Line matching with last change at home, double shifts, benching a player, choosing your starting goalie.

• Every game plays out shot by shot on a live rink, with play-by-play. Watch the line changes over the boards, the forecheck, the penalties, and the fights if you allow them.

• Modern numbers for every player: time on ice, power play and penalty kill time, shot share, and a game-by-game log.

• Injuries by body part and cause. Concussions linger, some players play hurt, and some setbacks end careers.

• Awards for players, coaches and general managers on every league's shelf.

• A record book, a Hall of Fame, retired numbers, and history pages for every team and league.

• Your own career page: the teams you've run, your records and trophies, and the deals that made your name.

• Achievements that take seasons to earn, a dynasty among them.

• Choose how much fighting the game allows: none, modern, or the 1970s.

• Keep ties instead of the shootout, set up the all-star game, and tune the difficulty one dial at a time.

• Build and edit leagues, teams and players in the editor.

• Bring your own database, logos, sweaters and faces.

• Share leagues, rosters and graphics on the Steam Workshop, and download what other players have built.

• Your careers follow you to any computer through Steam Cloud.

• Export the numbers to a spreadsheet.

Backcheck is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or licensed by any professional hockey league, players' association, team or player. The cities are real. The leagues, teams, trophies, players, owners and staff in the game are fictional.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

I used AI to streamline the store description I wrote, and to make it a bit more succinct.