Work · Game / Interactive experience
DoGoal
A physics-driven 1v1 goal battle, in real time.
What it is
DoGoal is a real-time 1v1 ball battle: control your stick, strike, defend your goal and outplay a live opponent. Cards change the momentum of a match; fields change the obstacles.
Why it needed to exist
Mobile sports games are either heavy simulations or idle tappers. We wanted a match you can play in a lift and still lose because you were outplayed.
What Idealink did
Idealink Games designed and built the game in Unity, the real-time networking, the card and pack economy, the push service and the store release in January 2026.
- Status
- Live
- Relationship
- Idealink venture
- Industry
- Mobile games
- Period
- 2026 — ongoing
- Platform
- iOS
- Idealink role
- Concept, game design, art direction, Unity engineering, backend, live operation
Thesis
Most studios can build an app. Few can build a game that stays fair at 60 frames per second against a real opponent. DoGoal is the game-loop story: a duel readable in one second and hard to master in a year.
01
One match
The whole vocabulary is a strike, a save and a rebound.
01 → 02
Match
Matchmaking in seconds against a real opponent. No players on the pitch, no referee — two sticks and one ball.
02 → 03
Read
Trajectory, angle, speed. Barricades and field obstacles change every rebound.
03 → 04
Play a card
Super Shot, Slow Time, Reverse Controls, Shrink Net — momentum changers earned from packs and upgraded with duplicates.
04 → 01
Score
Every goal feels earned because the physics is the same for both players and decided by the server.
02
In motion
Thirty seconds of real matches from the App Store preview: rebounds off barricades, a wrecking ball, a tornado, chests and goals.
03
The store listing
All eight App Store screens: the duel, the physics, cards and packs, customisation, and the four fields — Santa's Snowyard, Classic, Slam and Cozy Forest.
04
Production game engineering
Built in Unity with Mirror networking. The server owns ball physics and scoring, so latency affects feel but never fairness, and a client cannot award itself a goal.
A small Node service on Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers match and reward notifications; attribution and analytics were wired from the first build to watch retention per field and the health of the card economy.
Bright, readable 3D with exaggerated physics feedback so a rebound is legible on a small screen; one-thumb control during play, all strategy between matches.
05
The platform underneath
DoGoal launched with its dedicated servers on Unity Multiplay. When Unity retired Multiplay hosting, Idealink built its own platform instead of moving to the next vendor: Matchdock — matchmaking by rating and region, a dedicated server per match in an isolated container, and results only that server can report.
DoGoal now runs on Matchdock, and Matchdock is open to other studios in early access. The game is the platform's first customer and its proving ground.
Outcome
Where it stands
DoGoal launched on the App Store in January 2026 as Idealink Games' second live title and is the studio's proof point for real-time multiplayer on mobile.
Stack and capabilities
Only what mattered
- Unity
- C#
- Mirror networking
- Matchdock
- Node.js
- Firebase Cloud Messaging