Polish update for Militia 2, and the final thing on the BrainGoodGames list before hunkering down with some new prototypes.
Future possible expansion ideas for Militia 2 are currently some “god” tiles like in Minos Strategos randomly added to the Weekly Challenge, “Endless Mode” and a “Daily Climb”.
I’ve added tablet mode to Militia in settings! Now’s your chance windows tablet users to sit back and slay some orcs. You can also toggle the threatened indicators in there.
Secondly, I’ve added a hardcore mode to Solar Settlers. It’s on the beta now (To access the beta right click Solar Settlers in your Steam Library -> Properties -> Betas then enter “solarsettlersbeta” -> Click Check Code -> Select in Dropdown -> Restart Steam).
The changes are:
Colonists now cost 2 oxygen per turn.
You start with 5 oxygen.
You gain 1 oxygen of production for each settled colonist (but no more than the # of active colonists)
The idea is to lower the number of active colonists on the board at very high ranks, encourage more early settling and to reduce match playtime. We’ll see how it goes! Lots of discussion about the design is going on on the discord if you wanna join in.
Lastly I just wanna give a huge THANK YOU to everybody who has joined the BrainGoodGames community over the last little while. It has been by far the most sucessful week ever for BrainGoodGames, and I’m just thrilled and inspired that I get to keep making them. You guys rock!
Note: To access Hardcore Mode press the up arrow on your keyboard ten times on the main menu.
The Militia 1.15 (“Threatening Enemies”) Update is Live on Steam!
Patch Notes:
-Added threatened unit indicators (they show which enemies can attack you when you move)
-Enemies now can only make moves that were available at the start of the enemies turn
-Fixed rare bug with getting two floor clear popups at once
-Fixed fullscreen toggle check mark not showing up
-Added Main Menu/Play Again buttons on end screen
-Fixed bug with entering placement match from the Learn screen
The Axes and Acres 1.07 (“20/20 Vision”) Update is Live on Steam!
Patch Notes:
-Fixed text to be vector-scaled so it doesn’t look as blurry at higher resolutions
-Fixed buildings not giving VPs in the tutorial
I’ve been doing some retrospection on the design of SkyBoats and Militia, and I noticed that at least for me, Militia seems to be more appealing for me to boot up and play. Note that I’m not saying that SkyBoats is less fun WHILE playing, but that Militia has some factor that encourages playing it.
I’m thinking that it comes down to the fact that it’s easy for me to imagine playing the first few turns of Militia, and deriving some satisfaction out of it. For example, I can picture in my minds eye attacking a row of enemies including a captain in Militia, and how that might be a fun thing to do. In SkyBoats, most satisfying actions are very nuanced (involving specific setups of boats and wind patterns), and difficult to imagine when not actively involved in playing the game.
So I’ve been thinking a lot more about this concept of the “Imaginabilty” of games, and rating games on this axis. For example, It’s easy to imagine attacking with a bunch of creatures in Magic for lethal damage or pushing a ton of monsters into the water with Gale in Auro, but it’s more difficult to imagine what it might be like to play Agricola or Mount and Blade. (Note: I think this effect becomes mitigated as you become more familiar with a game).
Imaginabiilty requirements can be covered by even a small aspect of the full game, as is the case with last-hitting in Dota 2 (or League of Legends) or microing marines in Starcraft. The key is that the actions are:
1) Simple enough to be imagined in the minds eye and
2) Intrinsically rewarding in some way
Can you think of other examples of games with poor or exceptional Imaginability? Can you think of a better word for the concept? Let me know in the comments :).
Ta-da! The @BrainGoodGames Complete Bundle, featuring all three of our titles! 10% off that stacks with the 40% off Militia sale! In other news, Militia has just been updated with Keyboard/Controller support so you can now get your single player strategy fix all the way back on the couch.