Howdy folks. My name is Michael,and I'm proud to present my next project, which very well might be the most realistic WW2 strategy game ever made. Big words, I know, but hear me out.
It's WW2. You're a general, sitting in a tent. You have a radio, a map, some markers and unit figurines in front of you. Win the battle.
Unlike other WW2 real-time strategy games (Company of Heroes, Men of War, etc.), you are not some omniscient being floating above the battlefield. You have units to control, but you can't see them. There are enemies out there, but you can't see them. Your only link to the battlefield and your units is the radio. Your units will make periodic status reports to you over the radio, and you'll give commands over the radio.
The interesting part is what gameplay can be eked out of using a radio for verbal communication. You sometimes won't be able to contact a unit - are they dead? Is their radio broken? Are they currently retreating? When reporting their situation, units may not be entirely truthful; they will often exagerrate how many enemies they're fighting in order to receive more reinforcements. Units will sometimes get lost after they make a hasty retreat. When you ask them where they are, they won't know. Ex: "We're lost! But there's a river 300m east of our position, and a hill 600ms north of us." You can then look at your map and determine their approximate position by triangulating between the river and the hill they mentioned.
Gameplay will involve issuing orders via the radio, moving unit figurines around the map to represent where you think those units are, and drawing on the map with a marker to show orders or objectives. Much of the game will be about managing and representing the information you're given via radio.
The game is inspired by those old war rooms with those paddles that push the little figurines around. I thought it might be be fun to make a more abstract strategy game that relies on thinking, limited information and information management than fast-paced micro and memorizing the meta.
For now I'm going to just focus on getting the singleplayer working.
Future Features
- Voice control. Actually shouting into a microphone to order your units would be really sweet, though I could see it also getting tiring. This will depend on how good the free voice recognition libraries are.
- Multiplayer. It would actually be quit easy to implement online multiplayer - you don't see the units! All lag would be masked, as you don't see anything as you play. So long as the end result is consistent, the middle part doesn't matter much.
- Map editor. More maps = more goodness.
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I hope to post a devlog video every week or two. Earlier devlogs will be a bit tutorial-like and show the code I accomplish certain tasks with, while later devlogs will focus just on newly added features. Currently I'm working on this game solo.
I hail from the frigid wastelands of Saskatchewan (Canada). I work part-time on games while working on a Masters degree in Computer Science at my local university.
My previously released games include MMM: Murder Most Misfortunate and Lazer Cops. I enjoy games of all genres, so I decided that each game I make will be from a different genre! This is probably a mistake, but at least it keeps things interesting.
This is actually a pretty cool idea
Is there any way we players could support the effort? Like a Kickstarter or something like that?
Hi. Thanks for your interest! It's still pretty early in development, but a kickstarter isn't out of the question in the future. I've got a monthly newsletter on my site if you want to keep in the loop (I sometimes forget to update other sites): Foolish-mortals.net