Frogmind is the company known for titles such as the Badland series and the Rumble Stars series, and the latest entry in the latter franchise is called Rumble Hockey. This game, which is now available for both iOS and Android devices, promises real-time multiplayer hockey where you control a team of animals and compete against other human players to be the first to score three points in quick, three-minute matches. There are dozens of characters to collect in the game, physics-based gameplay that tests your ability to string together goal-scoring combos, and loads of features beyond the basic one-on-one PvP matches.
It may look like a simple game with casual mechanics, but if you come to think of it, it will require some smart strategy and a knowledge of several aspects of the game if you’re looking to achieve a high level of success in the higher divisions and leagues. However, everybody has got to start somewhere, and that’s why we’re going to be starting out at the bottom with the seven tips included in this Rumble Hockey beginner’s guide.
We’re going to be focusing on the fundamentals of gameplay and the basic concepts of Rumblers, lineup construction, and actual games or matches, so keep on reading — we’ve got you covered if this is your first time playing the game!
1. A Look At The Basics – A Primer On Rumblers
If Rumble Hockey looks familiar to you, that’s because it is, as we mentioned above, made by the same company that launched Rumble Stars Soccer two years ago. So if you played that latter game back then, you may have a pretty good idea of how things work — it’s essentially the same mechanics with many of the same characters, but this time, you’re playing with sticks and pucks instead of kicking a ball around. But for the benefit of those who are picking up this game for the first time, or need a refresher two years after Rumble Stars Soccer, we’re going to run things down anyway.
The basic premise here is that you will be facing human opponents in hockey games that end after exactly three minutes, or after someone scores three goals, whichever comes first. But in order to score those goals, you’ll need to know what each character does, and launch those characters at just the right spot to ensure yourself the best possible chances of scoring a goal. Your starter group of players — and that, too, would apply to anyone else playing the game — would, for one, include Striker Tiger, who’s an all-around scorer who could score goals from anywhere but doesn’t exactly excel at any specific type of shot.
Loyal Dog would also be used in the tutorial stages as the reliable assist man (or assist dog) who passes the puck to teammates. Then you’ve got Mr. Fire, which attacks opposing characters by exploding upon launch, and Lazy Panda, who can hit shots with great power but has one key weakness — he just stays where he is after you launch him, and only takes action when the puck crosses his path. These players are known in in-game lingo as Rumblers, which is just about right, given the name of the franchise.
After those four Rumblers, you will be introduced to a few more as the tutorial stage continues, and that will happen as you get to open the chests you earn as rewards for winning a game. And that includes tutorial matches — each chest may contain a variety of items inside, including coins (the common currency), gems (the premium currency), and new Rumbler cards. Rumblers can play offensive roles, such as Striker Tiger, but can also be used for defensive purposes — each Rumbler can only stay on the ice for so long as they naturally lose Stamina, but defensive Rumblers can attack opponents and make them lose Stamina through tackling and explosions, among other methods.
For example, Raging Bull is one of the first defensive Rumblers introduced, and while he does not care about scoring any goals, he helps out by relentlessly pursuing the nearest opponents and tackling them repeatedly while he’s on the ice.
All in all, you’ll be able to field a lineup of eight Rumblers, with a maximum of four that can be ready to use at the same time and the rest sitting on the bench until a Rumbler or two is deployed. In order to launch a Rumbler, you’ll need to have enough available Energy, and each of these characters have their own Energy costs that do not go down regardless of how often you upgrade them.
Typically, more common Rumblers cost less Energy to use than the rarer ones, but this could also depend on their general usefulness. For instance, Raging Bull only requires 4 Energy to launch, and with that in mind, he isn’t as effective as Croco, who also specializes in targeting opposing Rumblers and costs 6 Energy to use.
As we mentioned earlier, each game has a three-minute time limit, after which it could go to extra time if you’re still tied at the time the three minutes expires. The only time you can get a draw is if you’re still not able to score once extra time expires, but that won’t happen very often. Winning a game earns you Trophies — the more you earn, the closer you can get to making it to the next division — while losing will dock you some Trophies, usually slightly less than the Trophies you could earn for a win.
Related: Rumble Hockey Advanced Guide: 7 Tips & Tricks to Stay Competitive and Outwit Your Opponents
Overall, there are 42 Rumblers that are currently available to unlock, and as you get promoted from one division to the next — you can see your division above the rink overview in the main Rumble menu — you won’t just be facing more challenging opponents but also getting the chance to unlock more new Rumblers. For the most basic example of this, getting promoted from Division III to Division II in the Backwater Pond league will allow you to win Melon or Mr. Bigshot cards as chest rewards.
We’ve talked in depth about Rumblers and the roles the basic ones play. But what about your goalkeeper? Every team has one, but how does this work in Rumble Hockey?
2. Upgrading Your Rumblers Allows You To Increase Your Player (And Goalie) Level
As you earn more cards of a certain Rumbler, you will be able to level them up once you collect a specific number. You will need two cards of a level 1 Rumbler in order to upgrade them to level 2, four to get them to level 3, six to level 4, and so on, and once you level a Rumbler up, that’s going to increase their stats and allow them to perform better during matches. But how should you go about the upgrading process, and why should you do it in the first place?
The obvious answer to the “why” question would be to make your team and your Rumblers better. But as you’ll notice, you will earn Experience each time you level up a Rumbler — the amount of Experience gained will always be equal to the Rumbler’s new level. That means upgrading your Tiger Striker from level 2 to 3 would be worth three Experience Points. And once you’ve got enough EXP on you, you will then be able to increase your player level and effectively, your Goalkeeper’s level.
Every team has a lion serving as their Goalkeeper, and both have basic stats, namely, Stamina and Mass — both these numbers will increase once you increase your player level, so make sure you’re upgrading Rumblers even in the early stages, where common (Core) rarity characters are far more common than their distinction suggests!
Which Rumblers would be the best to upgrade ahead of the others? Our recommendation would be to prioritize Striker Tiger for that jack-of-all-trades scoring ability, Raging Bull for tackling purposes, and Lazy Panda for those hard slap shots and high Stamina that makes him rather difficult to take out. Loyal Dog is mostly there to move the puck, and Mr. Fire isn’t as impressive (at least for us) as his name suggests he is, so it’s no big deal if you choose to leave them as is and not upgrade them in the early goings. You may, however, want to upgrade them eventually, even a little bit, to add to your EXP and bring you closer to the next player level.
Do take note that aside from Rumbler Cards, you’ll need gold in order to level up a Rumbler — at first, the cost of upgrading will be negligible, but this figure will also increase progressively as a Rumbler keeps leveling up!
3. Silver, Gold, And Goal Chests – Managing Your Chest-Opening Strategy
Ordinarily, you will need to wait four hours in order to unlock Silver Chests and longer than that if you’re trying to get those rarer chests unlocked. You can pay gems in order to unlock them instantly, but oftentimes, you will also have the option to watch an advertisement video in order to immediately unlock a Silver or Gold chest without having to part ways with your premium currency. Simply watch the 30-second clip and that’s all it takes — the chests are opened and you can collect your coins, gems, and Rumbler cards.
As Rumble Hockey can only serve up so many ad videos, the option to watch an ad won’t always be available to you. And since there are only four slots for your chests, that means it would not be a good idea to play a new match against a human opponent once all slots are filled! That’s because any chests won when all the chest slots are full will be forfeited — just think how discouraging this could be if it turns out you’d be getting a Gold chest for victory instead of the usual Silver ones.
You can, of course, pay gems to expedite the process, provided you’ve got more than enough of them, but alternately, you can also stop playing for about an hour or so, then return to the game with hopes of ads being available for instant access to the chests.
Aside from the victory chests, you can also unlock Goal Chests, which are usually available once or twice a day and can only be opened if you’ve scored at least 10 goals from the time you last opened such a chest. These typically come with more gold and more Rumbler cards than what you’d get from a Silver Chest, but there is one caveat to these chests that we need to warn you about. If you forget to open a Goal Chest once you reach the 10-goal mark and score more goals in a new game, those goals in excess of 10 will NOT carry over to your next Goal Chest!
4. Test New Lineups Out And More In Practice Mode
By now, you should know that you can only use so many Rumblers in any given match — as you keep moving up from division to division and from league to league, you’ll get to unlock new Rumblers along the way, and you may be excited to use them right away and see how they can improve your prospects against other players.
However, we don’t recommend doing this — instead, we would advise you to try those new configurations out in Practice Mode before testing them against “real players.” Tap on the Lineup button, go to Practice on the upper right corner of the Lineup menu, and you’re set — you will be paired against an AI opponent with a similar number of Trophies and a corresponding team strength.
The obvious caveat to Practice Mode is the fact that you cannot win any chests for winning a Practice match. Even with the AI team typically being of similar strength as your team, their strategy won’t normally be on the up-and-up, thus making an AI team with 300 trophies much easier to beat than a typical human-controlled team at that level. Furthermore, that underscores how Practice Mode is a no-stakes, no-pressure kind of mode where you can hone your skills and keep them sharp. You can also use Practice Mode to keep yourself busy while waiting for chests to unlock, and especially if you’re on a bad run with multiple consecutive losses and need to regroup!
5. Your First Winning Lineups
When it comes to winning those early matches, the first thing you should remember is that your starting four (and that of your opponent) will always be random. Unlike in real-life hockey (or real-life sports), there is no way to choose your starters, so you’ll need to make do with what you have. But you can definitely choose the eight Rumblers you’ll bring with you to the match, and when doing this, you’ll need to have Striker Tiger as your basic offensive Rumbler and Raging Bull as a defensive Rumbler who could take the heat off of you by relentlessly tackling your opponents’ Rumblers.
And since you should also have at least two Superstar rarity Rumblers at this point, Sniper Wolf and Croco would be good choices — the former helps on offense with his long-range shooting, while the latter works similarly as Raging Bull, but this time, does more damage by biting enemy Rumblers. Lazy Panda should also be in there for some powerful, ideally close-range shooting, and Lover can briefly neutralize opposing Rumblers by making them useless through the power of love. (Of course.) Finally, Magnetman can be effective if used right, as he can pull an enemy Rumbler away from a short distance, and Loyal Dog somehow keeps the puck moving when he’s on the ice.
Once you get promoted to Division II in the Blackwater Pond league, you can make use of Mr. Bigshot as a replacement for Lover (or Cannonman, if you prefer shooting straight at the opposing goalie to take them out) for a quick burst of defensive power. And once you make it to Division I in Blackwater Pond, Froggy can replace Sniper Wolf if you’re comfortable using a Rumbler that catches the puck and immediately shots from where he’s at, but doesn’t move an inch once he’s deployed on the ice. It may be a bit harder to use him than it is to use other offensive players that are available at this point, but then again, that’s what Practice Mode is for!
6. Basic Tips For Winning Matches
Now that we’ve got lineup selection out of the way, we can tackle a few tips that we believe could help you win far more often than lose during your first few days or hours playing Rumble Hockey.
Going back to what was mentioned above, you can’t choose your starting lineup, but when choosing which Rumbler to deploy, you need to keep an eye on the energy bar on the bottom part of the match screen and be aware of the energy cost for using each Rumbler, as shown in the numbers underneath each of these characters.
Don’t bring out the big guns just yet — if Striker Tiger is available, launch him right away, then follow up with Loyal Dog after a couple seconds once your energy bar hits 3 again. Or, you can also wait until it reaches 4 and make Raging Bull your next Rumbler on the ice. At the very least, he can immediately target enemy Rumblers and tackle them constantly.
It is also important that you master the art of launching a Rumbler toward the right spot on the ice. Offensive players, naturally, need to be launched as close to the puck as possible, with Lazy Panda best used if he’s close to the opponent’s goal. As for defensive Rumblers, Mr. Fire is essentially wasted if your aim isn’t steady — this is one reason why we personally don’t use him too often. Raging Bull needs to be as close as possible to those opposing Rumblers, while Croco is arguably best used when you launch him toward the enemy goalie.
You should also keep an eye out for the Rumblers launched by the enemy side and not fall into the trap of just launching anyone willy-nilly, just as long as you’ve got enough energy. For example, you wouldn’t want Croco out there while an opposing Croco is also on the ice — you can neutralize that character by launching Lover or Cannonman, because two Crocos on the ice at the same time will only end up killing each other off.
One good mid- or late-match strategy is to take out the opposing goalie with Raging Bull or Croco, then follow that up by launching Striker Tiger or any other goal-shooting Rumbler so they can fire away at an empty goal with no keeper. You’ll need to act quick, though, because the window of opportunity is only around five seconds before the goalkeeper respawns! If this should happen to you on your end, it’s best to have a Raging Bull or a Croco ready to pursue scoring Rumblers from the other side and neutralize their threat before they fire a shot at your unmanned goal.
7. Complete The Quests
On the upper left corner of the main screen, you’ll see a button that allows you to access your daily quests, which reset once a day and can only be completed one at a time. It would seem that Frogmind is aggressively promoting Rumble Hockey’s social features, as joining a club, as we’ve observed, is always, by default, the first-ever quests.
You’ll get one free chance to reroll that quest and replace it with another one, but once you’ve used that chance, any subsequent replacement will set you back some gems! As such, you’ll eventually be best advised to join a club to get that quest out of the way, though we’re not going to discuss that feature just yet, as this is a beginner’s guide, after all.
Completing a quest will reward you with a quest chest, and just to keep your expectations reasonable, those chests will normally include just a handful of coins — fewer than the ones you can get from opening a Silver Chest. However, you can get a Completion Quest Chest once you’ve completed a total of 10 quests — these include 160 to 200 gold, 20 Rumbler cards, with four guaranteed Pro cards and one guaranteed Superstar!
And this is where we end our beginner’s guide for Rumble Hockey. Stay tuned, as we may come back with more advanced tips for the game in the nearest future! In the meantime, if you happen to know some useful strategies, be sure to let us know in the comments!