Foolish Mortals, the Saskatoon studio that gave us the splendidly foggy Radio General, is presently beta-testing a WW2 operational wargame that looks every bit as revolutionary as RG. If you’re a fan of Panther Games’ output, or frequently find high-level wargames exhausting, the reveal video embedded below is a must-watch.
In turnless Battleplan we won’t have to give orders to every friendly counter on the map. Lines and shapes scrawled on the map with a virtual grease pencil will serve as unit instructions.
Battleplan’s publishers, Slitherine, are celebrating their 25th anniversary this week. If I’d thought of it sooner, I would have written to them and suggested they mark the occasion with a Fox d’Or-style treasure hunt.
Reducing the prices of classy games like Field of Glory II: Medieval, Fantasy General II, and Battlestar Galactica Deadlock by 100% (giveaway ends on July 17) is a lovely gesture, but announcing you’ve concealed a silver lizard somewhere in the world, and intend to guide interested parties to its location via a series of cryptic clues, would probably have generated a bigger buzz.*
* Yes, this is a thinly veiled attempt to drum up business for Tally-Ho Treasure Hunts, me and Roman’s latest business venture.
Tally-Ho Treasure Hunts sounds highly intriguing Tim, I like it! Just wondering, is Anneka Rice part of THTH? I mean, do you already know Anneka or have you spoken to her agent about a possible promotion she might be interested in doing for your business? If not, just imagine the possibilities if you could get Ms Rice “on board”, as it were 😀 Good luck sir. And, good hunting.
PS for anyone else who doesn’t know what I’m talking about Re Anneka Rice, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyrWt6Kj1WE
Interesting company, this Foolish Mortals. As I understand it Radio General was mostly made my Michael Long. Their next game, Kaiju Wars, was lead by his brother Jeff Long. Then back to release the Radio General DLC. Their website http://www.foolish-mortals.net/ shows projects covering everything else from a visual novel game to a 400-player cop-op strategy game (that looks much like it could’ve been an influence on now making Battleplan).
All that to say, that I understand they like to make games that they’re interested in (hence the unexpected pivot from WW2 to Kaiju), and I think it is always a good sign when a competent team is working on something they have a passion for.
Battleplan actually looks a bit like some of the gameplay in Creeper World, especially when you have anti creeper and are placing it.
I’d certainly be interested in this level of abstraction, but it might be difficult to inform the player when they don’t have enough troops to do the commands they are issuing. Hold this 100km line with these 1000 soldiers?
Creeper World does it with being able to hover over any pixel in the game and you see how deep the creeper is, both allied and enemy and therefore easily see which areas need reinforcing or where you need to pull back and attack later.
So, in short, yes to the operational objectives, but no idea on the ‘why are my guys succeeding or failing to do what i just said’. I think it might work better with abstracting standard troops completely into ‘strength or concentration’ in areas and then the player choosing to place and use specialists specifically.
Certainly an interesting concept though.