Introducing Strat (in development)

[fatgamecat]

My brother Chris and I have been working on a turn based tactics game called Strat (final name undecided). Each level in Strat is separate with no growth system between levels, and the entire game is deterministic (non-random). It's definitely more of a pure strategy title and much closer to a puzzle game than an RPG. There are 18 playable units with 5 abilities each, along with a number of CPU only units and bosses. Each class has a defined role with unique and balanced abilities that are all useful in certain situations. It's a far cry from your typical imbalanced powers based tactics game where the majority of classes or abilities are inferior or useless. There are lots of mechanics in Strat like multiple objectives, doors and panels, triggers, reinforcements, teleports, terrain status effects, custom scripting in each level, etc. in order to keep combat varied and interesting. There is of course a scoring system as well as a real time limit per turn to keep the pressure up.

While I've been able to give feedback and advice on Strat's development, I don't have the final say on what goes into it, so I don't necessarily agree with every design decision. Most of my work on Strat has been designing and scripting the levels, which are later edited by Chris. Even with my experience playing tactics games, it's often a challenge developing and testing quality content. Please give the development build a try and let us know what you think.

I'm posting this to Serenesforest because I know there are some very good tactical gamers here and I'd love to get some more feedback, so please PM me or reply with anything you'd like to say about it.

[Progenitus]

this could be interesting, i'll look into it later

[Paperblade]

If mines disappear from 4 turns being up rather than exploding, the tile they're on is still considered to have them sitting there making it impossible for units to traverse them, but unable to attack the spot to blow them up. It made the map with the Stealer's debut... pretty easy...

Also the pathfinding for movement seems slightly off

   o
 ooo
ooooo
oooUooo
ooooo
 ooo
  o

normally movement is like this

and with an enemy right below, you would expect it to change to

  o
 ooo
ooooo
oooUooo
ooXoo
 o o

since you have 3 move

but in reality it changes to

  o
 ooo
ooooo
oooUooo
ooXoo

[fatgamecat]

Thanks for the feedback, Paperblade. I passed it along and he fixed the bug(s).

[Paperblade]

Damn now I need an actual strategy for defend maps