1. Churchill: trident of peace: the mod has gone thorough a complete overhaul. In its initial stage, we hoped to just to modify main mechanics of conference and modify how the war was being waged. In second version of the rules, the illusion of "that is just a mod" was eliminated. We were working on the completely different game, losing any pretense of old rules and mechanics. Game suddenly changed into a global war game, where battle were resolved using odd table, armies had industry ratings to support them, each and every nation had Intelligence and Counter Intel services, with varied quality. Game used d4, d6, d8 and d10. This is where we took a step back, gave it several play testing games and to our horror we realized, what kind of monster was born. Gameplay time jumped from 3 hours to 6, and flow of events became bogged down in calculating the odds and figuring out how to apply it naval, ground and diplomatic combat. It was, probably one the most complicated wargames written in our studio up to date, but it was not the game we were intending to make.
So third (and current version) of the rules had to be created. We came back to "cards only" mechanics during Conference phase, but retained the mechanics for Support, Abstain and Debate Action. War resolution is a roll of 2d6, but clandestine markers play a much more important role of adding extra die, and allowing player to choose one of the results. The biggest challenges at this point are game scoring mechanics, clandestine marker placement and influence gaining, and finally AI system for solitaire play.
 |
| if you don't look back, how do you learn from your mistakes? |
2. STALCKER : was and still is the main focus of our efforts. Sadly, project has been put on pause in June this year, when after substantial playtesting we found out that hybrid numeric (d12) and pictorial (custom d8 with several outcomes) is too heavy for the gameplay we had in mind. In addition, game has took a very significant influence from XCOM 2 and Descent 2nd edition, which was difficult to marry with hybrid system. Although, the new core mechanics will consist only of custom D8, there is a substantial amount of work left, testing and applying new core. That is the 6th version of the game, all the while the lore of the game is slowly getting built.
Another huge influence on the development was a game ZONA by polish studio Rebel games. If any game out there has captured the story aspect of Stalker universe is this one.
3. War and Peace : keeps evolving into base of both semi-historic global strategy game (similar to Axis and Allies or classic Pandemic) or sci-fi global strategy game. Although its very early to disclose any particular details of the project, we hope that cross, between classic war gaming odds and roll results system and custom dice resolutions, will prove easy enough and simple enough for our future players. However, there is still a lot of things that require further development. Current variant of the game is ready to be play tested, but due to Covid-19 restrictions its not possible to implement to fullest potential.
4. Combat Turn: our WW2 air combat game has reached the point of solidifying and simplifying major rules. All pilots/crews are divided into 4 levels of Battle expertise, one major super-skill that affects piloting and gunnery, while Initiative determines not only activation order, but who is firing first in the heat of combat. Stress became much more important mechanics, since it stops players from modifying the result of the dice roll. Considering that air combat is fast and furious affair, we removed a clunky planned activation step, now players will alternate activation on the fly, until someone runs out of fuel and must disengage from combat. Although, Combat turn did not get much development during this year, it proved that its basic concepts were correct.
5. Conclusion: despite the "elephant in the room", the current Covid pandemic, we took an approach that did not delivered positive results, namely a finished game, ready to for pre-production run. However mainly due Covid effects on gaming industry and our personal mental health some of the set goal were impossible to fulfill. Play testing in usual gaming clubs or friends became impossible. Due to the mental strain of being locked in the same house for more than several months had a significant debilitating effect on creativity and quality of life. The other significant discovery made during those failed attempts, is that we should stop developing so called "game engine", a universal library and tools for all possible games and focus on creating game delivering unique feel and core mechanics to them. That realization actually freed us to develop some unique decision for Combat Turn and War and Peace, as both were struggling with unified mechanics, while being very different games.
Another failed topic for us this year is a regular, once a month updates on our development process, simply due the lack of focus in said process. This and other failures of this year are the things we have learned, and will address in the planning and execution of our development schedule in coming year.
As someone once said: you may fail, fail, fail again, fail better than last time, but for as long as you stand up, you failures do not matter.
Sincerely yours,
Star Wolf Studio.
