Monstro: Battle Tactics Windows game

Monstro: Battle Tactics

Retrocade.net | Released 2014

About:

On Ludus, ancient terror beasts and humans somehow coexist in perfect harmony. Yet once every few hundred years or so, a predictably unpredictable astrological phenomenon occurs wherein some angry people from the sky arrive from their dimension, "Terra". Whenever they arrive, a fleet of floating islands are brought along and make up the battlefields where the humans and the beasts battle for the amusement of the angry Skygods.

Welcome to Monstro. A fully deterministic logic game which plays like a tactical RPG but without RP, character growth or randomness. Fight the opposing army on the battlefield, which just so happens to be made up of conveniently perfect squares. Survive the onslaught and strike back to be the last one standing. Or, occasionally, do something else the evil Skygods want to be done for their own amusement.

It is like chess but the units have statistics and your opponent is noticeably dumber than the average grandmaster.

List of features:

A puzzle game with completely deterministic and repeatable set of rules which still feels like playing a tRPG.
And even though it plays like a tRPG there are no RPG elements, so it feels more like a t.
A tongue-in-cheek plot, much better than the previous bullet point!
No need to tediously repeat the same sequence of moves over and over if you lose, because undo is here! Undo a single move, undo all moves back to the beginning of the mission, undo if you fail the mission and even undo if you are victorious!
Learn the rules of the enemy AI and use them for your victory. Or read them up because everything is in the in-game help!
Real-time lighting which adds new depth to the crisp pixel art.
Traps, pimped-up units, moving walls and breakable walls, ranged attacks and quick feedback on predicted enemy movement.
Achievements (currently being worked on) that give second life to missions you've already completed.
Trading Cards (currently being worked on).
Skygods, hand-drawn islands, ancient terror beasts, Goos with :3 faces and the background pushed around by an artificial wind.

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Big update and steam release of Monstro

Nov 20 2015 News 1 comment

We're happy to announce that Monstro: Battle Tactics is going to be released on Steam on December 3! First I welcome you to watch the new trailer:

On Ludus ancient terror beasts and humans somehow coexist in perfect harmony. Yet once every few hundred years or so, a predictably unpredictable astrological phenomenon occurs wherein some angry people from the sky arrive from their dimension, "Terra". Whenever they arrive, a fleet of floating islands are brought along and make up the battlefields where the humans and the beasts battle for the amusement of the angry Skygods.

Monstro is like chess, except the pieces have stats and your opponent is nowhere close to beating a Grandmaster. Still it's hard enough to remain fun (and occasionally frustrating)!

If you'd like to learn more about the game check out the Monstro's Steam page. And if you're familiar with the game below is a general list of things added and changed for the Steam release.

New HUD, lighting, tile markings:

The whole GUI of the game, all of the windows, buttons and menus have been reworked from the scratch. They are not only much more pretty, they're clearer, more functional and they fit the fantasy theme of the game. You could think it's just interface and you'd be very wrong. The game is much more enjoyable to play now.

Moreover, we managed to squeeze in a real-time lighting system despite the game being written in Flash/AS3. It's heavy on the CPU and GPU but if your PC is more or less new you can turn the crisp pixel art into fierce phoenix redefining all you call beautiful. It was a slight exaggeration but trust me, it makes a difference.

Another small thing that you can see in this screenshot is the new tile markings which using patterns and colors provide more context and information.

New campaign and better missions

There is a new, short campaign which teaches you all the basics of the game using a combination of showing and telling. But you can figure everything out yourself as long as you don't stop trying.

Following this we also removed and replaced some less enjoyable missions.

Other things

And to throw all the other changes into a single point: brand new level selection, ability to undo up to the beginning of the mission and from a move which failed the mission, some new levels and some bad levels removed, tongue-in-cheek descriptions for each level, new and better control scheme, improved minor visuals, fewer bugs, two new units, achievements and steam trading cards.