# Faster starts, and a fix for Arcade retries

A small but meaningful update — this one is mostly about getting you into a match faster,

plus a fix for a Last Call bug that could leave you stuck.

## Straight into the game

The intro sequence is gone.

The game used to open with three splash screens and a title video before you ever reached

the menu — roughly **15 seconds** of waiting before you could click anything. On a web build

that sits on top of the download time, which is the worst possible place to spend a player's

patience.

Now the game boots directly to the main menu. No splash, no intro video.

The opponent data for the first Arcade fight still pre-loads quietly in the background while

you're on the menu, so skipping the intro doesn't just move the wait somewhere else.

## Arcade: "Try Again" is fixed

If you lost a Last Call match and hit **Try Again**, the match would reload broken — no

opponent, no way forward, stuck staring at an empty table. The only escape was quitting to

the menu.

The cause: losing resets your Arcade run back to the first opponent, and that reset cleared

the loaded opponent — but the retry jumped straight back into the match without loading the

new one. So the table came up with nobody on the other side.

Winning and hitting "Next" always worked, because that path loaded the next opponent before

restarting. Now the retry path does the same thing. Lose, hit Try Again, and the run restarts

properly from the top.

## Runs properly in the browser

The web build had a portal-specific lock that could stop the game from starting anywhere

other than the site it was originally built for. That's been separated out, so the browser

version now runs correctly wherever it's hosted — including right here.

---

Hell is still being built. If something breaks, feels off, or just annoys you — tell us.

- Discord: https://discord.gg/THqM6baMrU

- Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4676260/Puckn_Hell/

- Play on itch.io

# Faster starts, and a fix for Arcade retries

A small but meaningful update — this one is mostly about getting you into a match faster,

plus a fix for a Last Call bug that could leave you stuck.

## Straight into the game

The intro sequence is gone.

The game used to open with three splash screens and a title video before you ever reached

the menu — roughly **15 seconds** of waiting before you could click anything. On a web build

that sits on top of the download time, which is the worst possible place to spend a player's

patience.

Now the game boots directly to the main menu. No splash, no intro video.

The opponent data for the first Arcade fight still pre-loads quietly in the background while

you're on the menu, so skipping the intro doesn't just move the wait somewhere else.

## Arcade: "Try Again" is fixed

If you lost a Last Call match and hit **Try Again**, the match would reload broken — no

opponent, no way forward, stuck staring at an empty table. The only escape was quitting to

the menu.

The cause: losing resets your Arcade run back to the first opponent, and that reset cleared

the loaded opponent — but the retry jumped straight back into the match without loading the

new one. So the table came up with nobody on the other side.

Winning and hitting "Next" always worked, because that path loaded the next opponent before

restarting. Now the retry path does the same thing. Lose, hit Try Again, and the run restarts

properly from the top.

## Runs properly in the browser

The web build had a portal-specific lock that could stop the game from starting anywhere

other than the site it was originally built for. That's been separated out, so the browser

version now runs correctly wherever it's hosted — including right here.

---

Hell is still being built. If something breaks, feels off, or just annoys you — tell us.

- Discord: https://discord.gg/THqM6baMrU

- Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4676260/Puckn_Hell/

- Play on itch.io

Here you can play and experience Puck'n Hell on itch.io

Root cause

The win path honors that contract:

On match ended → Advance Arcade campaign → Load next opponent and reload

                                            └─ loads the OD, THEN Reloads single player scene

The lose path didn't:

On lose try again clicked → Reset campaign  ← Selected opponent = null

                        → Reload single player scene          ← immediately, OD never reloaded

So the fresh scene reached game manager and found 'Selected Opponent' == null, skipped activating ai paddle with opponent definition data and difficulty level and fell into the Inspector-defaults branch — no opponent definition, no AI, match never starts. Exactly our symptom.

I audited all five 'Reset Campaign' callers — the other four (give-up, match-lost, quit, campaign-complete) all head to the main menu, where difficulty selection panel re-runs async loading opponent definition data asset before entering. "OnLoseTryAgainClicked" was the only one that re-entered gameplay after nulling the opponent. That's why this one button, and only this one, broke.

The fix

In game manager the Arcade branch now loads the opponent before reloading, mirroring the win path.

Here you can play and experience Puck'n Hell on itch.io

Root cause

The win path honors that contract:

On match ended → Advance Arcade campaign → Load next opponent and reload

                                            └─ loads the OD, THEN Reloads single player scene

The lose path didn't:

On lose try again clicked → Reset campaign  ← Selected opponent = null

                        → Reload single player scene          ← immediately, OD never reloaded

So the fresh scene reached game manager and found 'Selected Opponent' == null, skipped activating ai paddle with opponent definition data and difficulty level and fell into the Inspector-defaults branch — no opponent definition, no AI, match never starts. Exactly our symptom.

I audited all five 'Reset Campaign' callers — the other four (give-up, match-lost, quit, campaign-complete) all head to the main menu, where difficulty selection panel re-runs async loading opponent definition data asset before entering. "OnLoseTryAgainClicked" was the only one that re-entered gameplay after nulling the opponent. That's why this one button, and only this one, broke.

The fix

In game manager the Arcade branch now loads the opponent before reloading, mirroring the win path.

That's the story!

Well we've already accomplished that one, it's gonna be p2p, thanks to PurrNet; zero PhysX on the MP gameplay path — all collision is analytic fixed-point math, you'll get what you see in SP gameplay..

The game doesn't decide who wins — the table does. Play at Puck'n Hell itch.io

There is a cafe at the bottom of everything. The lights are low and the bar at the back never serves anyone — because the people who come here aren't drinking. They're playing.

Puck'n Hell is a one-on-one(just for beggining) physics-based air hockey gauntlet against five condemned souls. Each one has a name, a story, and a way of moving the puck that you have not seen before.

Their patience does not run out. Yours has to. Every shot is solved by physics, not scripts. There are no rubber-band catches, no guaranteed outcomes  just the puck, the table, and whichever of you can read the next bounce first.

The table's open — play the PC demo on https://store.steampowered.com/Puckn_Hell

We'll add what the community asks for. Every patch will explain what changed and why. We'll never ship a balance change that we can't justify from real match data. Wishlist Puck'n Hell for the patch notes.

^{Every rebound off the wall, every paddle hit, every glancing deflection is solved by the > same rigid-body simulation as the puck itself — and the AI is solving it from the same data you are.}