Hi everyone. I would like to announce my upcoming game, Tactical Warrior. It is a tactical RPG and as such the game play is in between an RPG and a turn based strategy. Right now I am hoping to have it released in early or mid January. Features: - 10 Classes of Warriors - Each with a variety of attacks and passive abilities to choose from. - 60 Items - Find some chain mail and a book of mastery to replace that stale bread your wielding. - Over 100 Battles - The single player campaign features well over 100 battles ranging from a one sided battle against a badger to challenging battles against bears, skilled warriors and more. - Hotseat Multiplayer - Challenge your friends in hotsteat multiplayer skirmishes. I will post more screen shots and info soon. Feel free to ask any questions you have.
The iphone needs more SRPG/TRPG games, so I'm happy your making one in this genre. Can't wait to see some video gameplay footage. One comment on the text, it seems hard on the eyes with the red/pink text againist an orange/red background (shown on the first screenshot).
Good point. I will probably play with those text colors to get them a little better at some point. I will hopefully post a video or two in a while, but I think I might leave it several days until I have hammered out some of the performance issues. The performance issues being it having mediocre frame rates in battle and it taking too long to load the character screen and swap between characters.
I like how you created your own unique art style for the game. How many characters can you control at a time? Also, are some of the battlefields bigger than one screen size (i.e. need to scroll around a bit to see everything)?
In the campaign you start out with 2 warriors and battles usually allow you to use somewhere from 2 to 4 warriors at a time. As you progress the battles start to get larger and you start using 6, 8 or even 10 warriors at a time. Some of the battles are, indeed, larger than the screen and require scrolling. They are never vastly larger but a bit larger. I found the size of battlefield in those screen shots was good for battles up to about 5 on 5 but after that was just too crowded. Yes, it will be playable on all devices. I actually do a lot of the testing on an ipod 2G.
I was thinking the same thing about being too crowded if you had 10+ warriors on a single screen size. One of my favorite things about playing SRPGs is using the battlefield terrain to gain elevation advantages or hiding behind objects, etc. I look forward to seeing a video
Unfortunately Tactical Warrior doesn't have terrain elevation at all. It also doesn't have flanking like a lot of Tactical RPGs but the different attacks your warriors have are fairly detailed which is were a lot of the strategy lies. I won't have a video ready until the new year with Christmas and all but once the new year starts I will try to get it out fairly quickly.
I am a fan of tactical RPGs, and what I see, seems to have great promise. Here are a few suggestions: 1. Tone down the colors. Even in the 2nd set of screenshots (which I believe is from a later build), the green field looks very green. Also, in the character details screen, the brownish background can be made a bit darker (And no gradient is required, believe me ). 2. Please change the font. Seems cheap in the battle screen and too office-like in the character screen. 3. What are those barrels for? Are they just for beautification of the map (since you mentioned there is no terrain trade-offs) or can the player collect loot from them? In the second case, that would be a good feature. 4. Finally, try to bring in the terrain feature, since there are open-air maps. Best of luck. And btw, will there be any beta testing? I will be very happy to test the game.
Well, I've been playing SRPG's since the old apple II days (i.e. Wizard's Crown & Eternal Dagger) and terrain elevation is not really necessary, as long as you have a variety of skills/stats to manage for your characters. Also, you said there is "no flanking" in the game, but will there be bonuses for things like formation? Have a happy holidays and look forward to future updates on your game. Including Tactical Warrior, I've counted four SRPGs releasing in early 2011 for the iphone/ipad (Lost Company, Tactical Soldier: Undead Rising & Final Fantasy Tactics), so I'm excited for this genre to finally grow.
Thanks for the suggestions Sandy. I will definitely consider them. The barrels are obstacles. You can't move through them, though ranged attacks can be used over them. When you say no gradient is required on the character screen why is that? (does it look worse with one?) Right now there is beta testing, but just with people I know. There could possibly be a beta with touch arcade users once it is a bit closer to being finished. I need to play through the campaign and adjust the difficulty levels a bit more before that could happen though. Well, there definitely are a solid number of skills and things to manage. There aren't direct bonuses for formations, but there are of course advantages to things like forcing the enemy to attack your more defensive units or protecting your archers. Healers and champions also have attacks and passive abilities which can give bonuses to adjacent allies or allies within certain distances. They reward formations in a way, even though the formation it self gives no bonus other than letting you get more out of your skills. I have been thinking of pricing it at $2.99(US/CAN) but it isn't 100% certain yet. I am hesitant to price it at more than $2.99 because I worry that people might not want to risk paying too much for a game from an unknown developer. There isn't much of a story in Tactical Warrior, unfortunately, just a thin bit of story when you start the campaign to get you going. Instead you progress along various maps and use keys you win in certain battles to unlock new areas. There are often not enough keys to go everywhere so you choose which area's you want to fight in and which you want to skip. It looks like this: Unfortunately it won't be universal, it will be iPhone only. It will, however, be tested on iPad to make sure it still works on it. If Tactical Warrior does surprisingly well, though, I might decide to upgrade it to universal later on.
Sorry I haven't got a video up yet as promised, Marcus70. I am still in the middle of switching the graphics over to cocos2d so the game is in an unplayable, transition state. I should have a video up by the end of the week though. The release date is also going to be a little later than I thought. Sorry about that. I hope to be submitting it to Apple by the end of January. It mainly just has a lot of play testing left to do along with various smaller odds and ends.
