Forth. New Horizons

Let me begin with an old news: our current project has been play tested at UK Games Expo in Birmingham. It may seem like a small or insignificant event, but the experience of showing your project to unknown audience was essential. Consider, this: every day gamers are bombarded by the huge amount of various new and old gaming news. You get anything from new releases, regular editions to re-masters of cult classics. To add you own humble voice to the this choir is another step in making your dream come true. 

But to get there, you start with your immediate circle of friends and gaming buddies, show them your works and hope they like it. Then comes the time when you are brave enough to bring it to the public. This is where you immediately know if your game is ready or need more work. 

The latter is the case, for our current Project STARZ. This game was born from idea of making a mod to existing card-driven board game about escaping from crashing space ship, by expanding its mechanics, adding dice rolling, characters and ... Yeah. Its a lot. 

After six months of working out the concept, characters and main mechanics game was presented for a public play test. It was the most nerve racking experience until people actually started playing the the game. When you see people having fun when playing something you've been working so hard to create, it changes your world. all the doubt, the sleepless nights, ideas that you were not sure will be understood suddenly fit into the experience. 

Yes, there is definitely a string of questions and feedback. No game is ever perfect in its first or even second iteration. But it just a fuel for the development. 

So, when is your game coming out? Where can i see it or play it? Short answer is when its done. 

Regardless of game development achievements, life has its own challenges. Due to several factors my general health and mental well being took a serious hit in July. Forcing me to take a break from social gaming, then change the day job i held. As I'm writing this, it is the end of August. I do feel better, but not enough to dive head over heels into a development marathon i did in the beginning of this year.

 So, I have to take it one step at a time... 

Third. that difficult third.

Its been far too long since Second post was published here. It seems like it was made in another dimension, so much has changed in gaming, business and personal life. 

3D printing revolution has won. With printers and resin getting more and more accessible to average players, less people tend to by plastic models. 

Games Workshop has unveiled new edition with free rules, along multiple "specialist" games. Killteam became a legal copycat of Infinity. Gasslands have created a following in both GW games and other Indie games.

AI revolution is happening. More and more publisher use  AI generated art, texts and other content in both video and table-top games. 

Dungeons and Dragons has celebrated 50 years, and moved into new age with new editon of rules where everyone is rainbow puking pony. 

Despite that, Baldurs Gate 3, designed for mature audiences became the game of year and most popular game on Steam. 

Boardgame market has over 200 new titles every year. Thats the most worrying sign, of market being overpopulated. However, nobody know if its going to implode as it happened with late 90- s Atari chipset games. 

We are still in development limbo. Studio has shrunk to a one man band (namely Pavel). Then we had to stop working on games at some point due to stress of day job. A small success was to show a prototype of our strategy game during UK Games Expo 23. 

Then, more and more playtests, redesigns and improvements. Step by step.

That third step was really difficult. 

Star Wolf Studio report : November 2020

In short: we failed. As 2020 comes to its conclusion, and Star Wolf Studio looks back at the amount of work we have and have not done this year, the conclusion is simple one. We have failed to achieve all of the set goals for this year. Out of 8 concepts we have managed to get only our global strategy to the play testing stage. That is 1 out of 8. Lets look at our projects during this year:

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.

StarWolf Studio: 2019 report

So, as some of you may have noticed our blog went into hibernation for some time. That of course did not mean that our development stopped. But before we start talking about what has been done, lets quickly look at our great plans for 2019.

First of all, 2019 was a year of prototypes. We began this year with a bucket of games in sketches, written in various development diaries. There were almost 16 different projects in different stages of development, from two sentences like : "game about blowing up transports in the ocean" to a developed and ready to be tested miniatures air combat game set in WW II. So it was decided that we take 8 projects and develop each one of them into working and playable prototype. 8 seems like a middle ground number, and just in the balance between time, effort and our game development skills.

Platform for play testing and feedback was chosen a Birmingham Board Game Bash group. In retrospect, that is an amazing group of motivated and friendly game designers, who had a tremendous input on our development as Studio, as game designers and as human being.

So eight chosen projects were:
● CHURCHILL -TRIDENT OF PEACE, mod for Mark Herman's Churchill (game about conferences between allies during WW II),
● COMBAT TURN: tactical miniatures air combat game, based on our BAZILEVS wargame engine,
● CONVOY COMMANDER: tactical logic and prediction game about moving a convoy through submarine infested waters,
● SWAT : tactical miniatures game about storming a rooms with hostages and bad guys,
● STALCKER: : tactical RPG about leading small crew in search of artifacts and survival across the Zone,
● STEEL BATTALION: wargame based on our BAZILEVS engine, set in ww2 where player controls up to battalion size combined force of infantry and tanks, along with air/artillery/naval support.
● WAR & PEACE '41: global strategy set around the World War II, and interaction between Axis and Allied players both in political, economical and military positions. Up to 7 players.
● MEGGIDO '95: global strategy set in alternative universe, where Earth is slowly terraformed by aliens, while two opposing blocks are fighting each other to the death. For 2-8 players.

Our ambitious plans were obviously tampered by events in ordinary life, poor health, day job and many other excuses. However, as of the end of September 2019 we have achieved following progress:
Churchill - second version of working ruleset, prototype is ready to be played.
Combat Turn - playable prototype with core mechanics set, development continues on talents, skills, national specifics.
Convoy Commander - second prototype of rules is in development
SWAT - first prototype is ready and being tested for combat mechanics and events
Stalcker - work on first prototype continues, as well as development of missions and event system.
War 'n' Peace 41 - work on first prototype continues.
Meggido 91 - work on first prototype continues, as game is slowly taking shape and focus.


Main achievement is we have gained as a studio, is that we have build a solid gaming engine capable of being applied to almost any type of the game. BAZILEVS engine remains simple 3 step solution to majority of tasks using one type custom dice and one numerical die:

1) Calculate your dice pool

2) Roll-off, modify and compare results with opponent's roll

3) Determine the difference in successes: the higher the bigger the effect of your action. .


In short, out 8 initial projects 4 are in the state we are happy with. Let me remind you, that despite so many projects, Studio had planned only to establish main working concepts and make prototypes during this period of our development. By reaching 50% of established mark, we should be at least satisfied with current result. Mind you, working on several projects at once has its pluses and minuses. First of all, it allows transfer of ideas from one project to another, second of all, it does not allow to get lost in details of just one system. The biggest problem of course, is that of concentration; focusing on only one project allows for a faster development times, and delivery to the players and customers.

That would be our next goal, as a studio: taking one working concept from prototype and developing it into a full fledged game, along with lore, graphics, dice and world map.

But that is a story for 2020.


Sincerey Yours,

Mark-Paul Severn