Wildflower is being worked on by the team that made Tenderfoot. It builds on Tenderfoot's combat systems and takes them in new directions, focusing on scale (some units many times the size of others), visibility and stealth, and emotional manipulation. Additionally we've gone from a 12x12 grid to a 64x64 one. It's gonna be wild and excellent and we think you'll love it! Wildflower situates these combat systems in a broader, story-based RPG that includes gardening, cooking, and foraging, but is highly player-directed (like Tenderfoot) and so lets players focus on what they find interesting. I expect we'll have a public demo / prologue (and maybe even early access) period so please do follow the project if you find it interesting! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1764340/Wildflower_From_the_Embers/

[ 2021-10-22 17:10:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

6953036 Fixed a bug where Sony controllers did not have a default keybind for "Action 2". If you play with a Sony controller please go to your keybind menu (in the Settings menu) and assign Square to "Action 2", or reset it to the default preset. This input is useful for leaving caretakers in towns and, most importantly, for focusing on hovered goblins in combat and viewing their skill tooltips.

[ 2021-06-29 20:06:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Localization! Plus a variety of UI tweaks, some new music, quality of life for streamers, etc.

• Full localization for Simplified Chinese, Spanish (LATAM), Portuguese (BR), German, French, and Russian.
• Various tweaks to the UI and text styling.
• Added a 'Borderless Fullscreen' mode (just fullscreen but doesn't confine the cursor to the game) and made the game stay active when unfocused so streamers or other multi-monitor players can click around with less bother.
• Assorted bugfixes and minor optimizations.

[ 2021-05-27 17:39:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all! Just a quick announcement to say that Tenderfoot Tactics is now available in a handful of new languages. Thanks for taking a look! Enjoy! - Badru twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv

[ 2021-05-27 17:27:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi goblins! We're real excited to announce that, coming very soon, you'll be able to play Tenderfoot Tactics in any of the following languages:

• Simplified Chinese
• Spanish (Latin America)
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• German
• French
• Russian

We're still pulling things together, but all of the above languages other than Russian are available on the beta branch, which you can get access to through our Discord (which also has feedback channels, which is why we send folks there first). If you're bilingual and could offer help, we'd love to catch any issues before setting things live. Localization has been way more of a challenge than anticipated (this is our first time) so I hope people like it! I've learned a lot and built some tools, so for nextgame this will be much faster and less painful. And of course, adding new languages to Tenderfoot Tactics will be a breeze! We just don't have a ton of money and so couldn't afford to do too many languages all at once. But hopefully these translations help fund more! So if you have a language you'd like to request, let us know. - Badru twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv
PS while we're not ready to announce anything just yet, we've also been working on nextgame, and I can say that so far the nextgame team is the Tenderfoot team + 1, and I can say that it's cool as hell and you're gonna love it. So uh keep an eye on us wherever eyes can be kept. I've got a mailing list I'll definitely hit (and that I basically never use otherwise), and it will very likely be another Ice Water Games joint, so if you keep up with IWG you shouldn't miss it. We'll be real loud, when it's time.

[ 2021-04-15 15:58:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quick fix for a variety of small bugs.

• Worm 'Ram' and Polearm 'Charge' now cause knockback in the direction of caster movement, even if the charging unit ends up on the other side of the hit unit.
• Fixed a bug with Polearm 'Charge' that was preventing it from displaying tooltips dynamically added by equipment, e.g. the +knockback from a pearl.
• Fixed a bug with Polearm 'Charge' that was causing it to 'hit' the targeted unit even if the Polearm's charge would be blocked.
• Removed newlines from status effect descriptions. Multiple effects from one status are now separated by commas.
• Fixed a bug with Freezing Ray 2's damage not upgrading.
• Bewitch 2 and 3 can now be self-targeted and only hit enemies.

[ 2020-12-06 04:31:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quite a few notable changes in this still-smallish patch. Wave fights will be a bit less frustrating, as incoming wave direction is now telegraphed. Fog goblins will include a variety of playable classes now as you level up. Frost giants got a nerf. A handful of tweaks to old abilities, and some new upgrade options to abilities I thought were a bit underused on average.

• Beginning around the level you start seeing trolls, enemy goblins will now have a chance to be any playable breed you've unlocked. Goblins spawned from behemoths will still always be unevolved goblins. As you level up, you'll see advanced goblin breeds more and more often.
• Incoming waves will now telegraph their source direction using the same display as 'incoming fog enemies chasing you' (soft red lines).
• Newly deployed enemy waves are no longer purely random in their insertion into the turn order, will always make sure the player gets a couple turns mixed into their first few turns.
• Fae Tree waves are now slightly harder. Used to be 50% of the player party's normal difficulty level, raised to 60%.
• Waves in custom encounters other than Fae Trees are now slightly weaker. Used to be 100% of a normal party strength, reduced to 90%.
• Frost Giants had their challenge rating increaseed slightly (you'll get more experience from them and they'll show up in smaller groups on average).
• Added Shatter (Lich) and Immovable (Battlemage) as learnable abilities for Frost Giants.
• Fixed a bug causing Frost Giants to always have Breaker (it's still a learnable ability as they level up though).
• Party Menu music now only interrupts and mutes ambient world audio if you're in the fog.
• Healed some cursed objects that were vanishing when viewed from certain angles.
• Added a 'retries permitted' setting to the difficulty settings. This is disabled in 'iron' and 'bone' difficulty modes. You'll still be able to cheese retries by closing the game and rebooting it, but that's true on most ironman modes, so I think it's alright.
• Added a general warning about (/recommendation against) messing with the difficulty settings on your first playthrough.
• It will now rain less on average.
• When inspecting/focusing a goblin's abilities during combat, using gamepad, status effect tick counts should show (they hadn't been previously).
• The 'Burning' status effect now generates 2x the amount of heat it did previously, to increase the odds that it starts fires under affected goblins.
• Fixed a bug where taunted units would have their taunt target changed when someone applied a non-taunt status effect to them.
• Minor AI bugfixes.

GOBLIN:

• new: Anesthetize 2 (+25 healing upgrade)

WOODS WITCH:

• new: Scamper 2 (adds 480 ticks of regen to hit units)
• new: Clear 2 (removes status effects, +5 healing upgrade)
• Flourish got a +5 healing buff

POLEARM:

• new: Skewer 3 (+10 dmg upgrade)
• new: Repulse 2 (+10 dmg upgrade)

SPELLSWORD:

• new: Blood Curse 2 (shape upgrade from point to cross)
• new: Freezing Ray 2 (+10 dmg upgrade)
• Blood Curse tick duration increased from 500 to 1000

BATTLEMAGE:

• Tend 2/3 got a +5 healing buff

ELEMENTALIST:

• 'Flash' base damage raised from 5 --> 10, but now applies 'Burning' to caster.

[ 2020-11-21 00:37:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

A lot has changed since launch! I think the game is much stronger because of early player feedback. Thanks so much to everyone who helped out!

Major Updates Roundup

• Keymap / rebinding menus
• An option to skip the intro and instead start in a random location, for people returning for a 'new game+' experience
• Difficulty settings with some funky challenge modes for people who want to spice up their new game+
• Significant improvements to the AI
• Improvements to enemy variety, especially in the mid-late game, with enemies now leveling up and learning new abilities
• Improvements to major mechanics (fire/burning)
• New abilities and ability shapes (long cone!)
• The ability to hide tutorials
• And a bunch of bug fixes, quality of life stuff, and broad gameplay tweaks

A Preview of What's to Come

I don't want to promise too much, because I think I'll be starting to focus on translations soon, so gameplay updates might slow down a little, but here's what's live on the beta branch (get access on our Discord) right now:

• Incoming waves of additional enemies now telegraph their source direction while they're counting down turns-until-entry
• Newly deployed enemy waves get inserted into the turn order in a more fair, less purely-random method, to make sure players get a chance to react
• Further improvements to enemy variety: beginning around the level you start seeing trolls, fog goblins have a chance to be any playable breed you've unlocked

Also! Like mentioned above, translations! Probably! We still need to do some infrastructural work to make localization possible, but sometime in the near to moderately near future I'll give you a more precise update about what languages and when to expect them. Probably not until a couple months into 2021 at the earliest, but don't hold me to that.
Another thing we're working on is ... *whispering* another tactics rpg??(!!) Sales of Tenderfoot are good enough that I'm likely going to be able to self-fund another game! Thank you all so much for your support! I'm already super hyped on the next project and so it's been really fun to squeeze in some work here and there on it. I don't think we'll want to show anything until well into next year, but if you like Tenderfoot and want to make sure you catch the next one, get on my mailing list! Okay time to get back to work on Tenderfoot. Thanks for playing! - Badru twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv

[ 2020-11-17 23:28:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

• Fixed a bug causing the (X) close button in the keymapping menu to not show up if you entered the keymapping menu from the pause menu.
• Scooched the settings menu slightly to center it better.
• Fixed a bug where you could click through the difficulty menu to the pause menu if you clicked in just the wrong place.
• Fixed a bug causing the skill tooltip display to remain up indefinitely if you paused while hovering a skill in combat deployment.
• Turn order shuffling at combat setup is now pseudo-random, guarantees the player's first goblin goes either first or second, attempts a somewhat more even distribution as the initial order.
• Added tooltips to the difficulty settings. (Only accessible with cursor currently, sorry gamepads!)
• Fixed a recently introduced bug making scrollwheel not work with memory/affinity selection.

[ 2020-11-13 20:34:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

AI should be dramatically less stupid, especially ranged AI. This might make the game harder across the board, but it will also make it less annoying as ranged AI wont turtle so often. Enemy classes will have some skill variety as you get higher level than them, and encounters will be more varied between hordes-of-low-level and fewer-high-level types.

• You can now click away / click nothing to hide the memory selection window in the train menu.
• Changed the way the game handles you reaching the plateau at a low level. Old behavior: would show you the single lowest level enemy team comp that spawns on the plateau (archers + embers). Now: always includes the first 20 or so plateau comps (so will have a chance to spawn trolls, faeries, imps, behemoths).
• As you grow higher level than enemy classes, you'll begin to see them learn new skills and level up. This already happened with enemy goblins, but now you'll see it happen with more classes, and you'll see higher level enemies rather than huge hoards of enemies more often, although the game will try to generate fights of either type based on random rolls. Added a significant amount of alternate abilities (taken from playable breeds) to various enemy classes so they become more complex and less samey as you get used to their standard builds.
• AI learned about damage over time, learned to like applying Marked to enemies, and that possibly deploying a Shadow is at least as good as 10 extra damage.
• Reduced Spellsword 'Nightmare' base damage from 60 to 50.
• Fix to one(1) bug causing turn order display portraits not to render correctly sometimes during deployment.
• AI now prefers being nearly in range of attacking you even if it can't quite get into range, and ranged AI now prefers staying as far away from you as possible while still remaining in range.
• Gave The Trickster an alternate version of Vortex with reduced dmg (40 --> 30) and increased range (5 --> 7)
• Fixed an AI bug causing it to very often not see standing still as a viable option.
• Fixed a bug causing the 'Retry' button that appears after you flee or lose a combat to result in you fleeing home anyway.
• Fixed a bug causing the title screen to frame the camera in the wrong place often when you quit to title after playing some.
• Added 'NOT RECOMMENDED' warnings to some of the more experimental difficulty settings.
• Fixed a bug with the 'max team size' difficulty slider that was causing it to skip '2' as an option.
• Potentially-significant performance improvements game-wide.
• Fixed some visual bugs where the screen would crossfade to/from 'black' twice when loading directly into a combat.

[ 2020-11-12 21:21:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Look for the difficulty settings menu in the pause menu after loading a save file. I don't recommend messing with them much unless you're looking to change the gameplay up to make a second playthrough fresh. Maybe if the base game is a little too hard or easy, try adjusting the 'difficulty modifier' slider slightly. Also, if tutorials are annoying you, there's now a tickbox to disable them in the tutorials section of the pause menu.

• Fixed a bug causing the overhead healthbar dmg preview to often be wrong when a goblin had Lofty.
• Tweak to floating dmg/heal numbers in combat. Will no longer show overhealing, but will still show overkill dmg because it feels good.
• Caretakers will now be counted towards the Master Breeder achievement.
• Fixed a bug causing start-of-game herb placements to sometimes be inside buildings or in other unreachable places. Should retroactively destroy any herbs that spawned inside of buildings in your game on load.
• Fixed a bug forcing joystick controls during combat deployment.
• Added a sniffing-distance pointer to the first map by your start spot so new players are more likely not to miss it.
• If you've [spoiler]visited Rutabaga or claimed the castle[/spoiler] on a save game on your machine, when starting a new game you'll have the option to skip the intro scene. If you do skip the intro, you'll start in a random location.
• Fixed a bug causing speech bubbles or narrator scene text to overlap the pause menu.
• Cinematics will now pause when you pause.
• Difficulty settings menu now available in pause screen.
• if you have no goblins remaining (only possible with permadeath enabled currently) you are now free to fly forever as a bird. if you land near a fog goblin you should have an interaction prompt that will let you claim them. (Note: not sure how recoverable a game is at this point since playing as a solo goblin is maybe really hard.)
• There is now a tickbox in the tutorials menu that you can use to disable (or re-enable) tutorial pop-ups. This is a system-wide setting and not per-savegame. Tutorials will be automatically disabled when you start a new game and choose to skip the intro.
• Difficulty settings now automatically pop up when you start a new game (if you've [spoiler]reached the castle or Rutabaga[/spoiler] and so have access to intro-skipping).

[ 2020-11-10 19:02:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Biggest thing is the key mapping menu has finally made it in. (Look for it in the settings menu.) Also important is that fire, instead of dealing 1 damage directly every tick, now applies a short term debuff 'burning' which deals 1 damage per two ticks but takes time to expire and can be refreshed by new fire. Burning goblins can also spread fire if they walk into dry grass.

• Keymap menu available within the Settings menu.
• Previous/next map buttons are now by default assigned to the shoulder buttons on gamepad (rather than dpad L/R).
• Fire now applies a 'Burning' damage-over-time debuff rather than dealing damage directly.
• Pit Fiend 'Marked' will forcibly trigger the 'Burning' debuff on hit even if the afflicted goblin is in non-burnable terrain. (Used to add heat to the simulation, but the ground would often not catch fire so it felt ineffective.)
• Added a 'no mouse' keyboard input scheme (not ideal as is but it's a start). Using 'move' buttons in some menus or 'rotate' buttons in the overworld (i.e. things that you would otherwise use your mouse for) will cause the game to switch to joystick-like controls for menu navigation even when not using a joystick.
• 'Regen' now lasts 720 ticks (up from 480).
• Bog body attack now applies poison.
• Bog body base health increased from 25 --> 30.
• Possible fix to the headbanging bug.
• Fixed a bug causing Spellswords to revert to their feral bodies on death.
• Fixed a bug causing bosses to explode on death.
• Various 'press x' type displays will now attempt to auto-update and display whatever your current keybind is for that button.
• Tweaks to behavior of combat radial action menu that allows left stick to be used the way dpad is used to navigate (i.e. tapping left/right to move through actions if you mis-select with your first radial direction).
• Fixed a bug that was causing feral teams to occasionally be only 2 goblins even at mid or high levels.

[ 2020-11-03 19:24:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bugs bugs bugs, plus some love for ranged cone attacks.

• Hopefully final fix to that incessant resolution reversion bug.
• Fix (possibly only partial) to a bug that allowed you to access two memories at once.
• Improvements to consistency in the code for combat turn order UI portraits. may fix some bugs and slightly improve performance.
• Added up/down arrow keys to Bird's Eye tutorial.
• Hopeful fix to the bug causing combat setup to get confused if you start an interior encounter right as a group of fog goblins attacks you.
• Added support for +range trinkets interacting with cone shape spells like Dragonbreath, plus some VFX work to make it look right.

[ 2020-10-28 00:22:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just bugs and QoL.

• The load system will now gracefully handle situations where player data corrupted such that your save location has NaNs in it. If this happens to you, you'll find loading your save that you're back at your most recent home (or if your home's location was corrupted as well, at a randomly chosen home).
• Fixed a couple bugs with inventory scrolling that were only showing when there was a single extra row needed for display.
• Fixed a bug causing the 'consume fae weed' dialogue to not autoselect properly on gamepad.
• Fixed a bug causing the cancel button (B/Circle on gamepad) to close the party menu entirely when you really just wanted it to deny the 'consume fae weed' confirmation dialogue.
• Scooched the 'X' close button in the settings menu so it's easier to select without turning the volume up.
• Added a confirmation dialogue for when you try to create a new game in a used save slot, so its not so easy to accidentally overwrite your data.
• You should now be able to fulfil the PILGRIM achievement by beating the game, if you skip the quest segment that normally fulfils that achievement.
• Fixed a bug causing graphics settings to revert to CRUNCHY 180p if you saved and reloaded with CRUNCHY 1080p.

[ 2020-10-27 00:12:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

First off, thank you so much for playing!! It's been SUCH a great few days since release. Reviews are still 100% positive (????!!!), press reception so far has been overwhelming (did you hear the Waypoint Radio snippet? So good!) and sales have been good enough that I'm confident about continuing to support this game. Thank you all so much for supporting us in this! It's been a long long (6 year) road to get here, and we're just feeling so proud of having pulled it off. Okay so what I actually want to talk about in this update though, is where we're headed with our post-release support plans for Tenderfoot. I'm breaking this into a couple sections, and mostly I don't want to make any promises just yet! Making this game has turned me into a chaotic goblin creature and I simply cannot be expected to plan that far in the future. But here's where our heads are at:

CONTINUAL:

This stuff is essential to make sure everyone has a good experience with the game, and it'll likely keep me pretty busy for a few days, and then will take up some amount of my attention indefinitely.

• bugfixes, quality of life, and settings needs
• balance tweaks to playable breeds and enemy types

SOONISH:

Hoping to get in some things that feel near-essential, or at least have been on my to-do list for a long, long time, and were easy to put off pre-release, but now are feeling like they need to be in there for this to be a complete game. If bugs don't keep me too busy I think this stuff might be done in a week or two.

• keybind menu
• new game+ challenge modes

We have a few exciting ideas for challenge modes for Tenderfoot that go beyond just cranking up the difficulty slider (though we'll do that too probably). Through development we went through many different designs and some of those ended up being too challenging for the base game but also particularly interesting. One example is a seemingly minor change to the way 'Unnerve' works, where by default any unit being hit from the front is promoted in turn order, and an attack from behind only knocks them back one. When we tried this out the game felt suddenly so much more difficult, too much for the base game, but as a long term player (/developer) I was having a lot more fun with how aggressive it made everything feel. There are a few other changes like this that I'd like to include as options for new playthroughs once you've finished the game once.

LONGER TERM HOPES AND DREAMS:

These are things I'm definitely not promising because I'm not positive how long they'll take, or whether feedback from players will guide us in different directions by the time we get here. But these are the things I most want to do before moving on from this game, just speaking from the vantage of this crisp October morning:

• more variety in enemy types, especially in endgame play
• more variety in starter goblin stats: different goblins have unique traits and different skill options available in their default breed
• (maybe) one or two more advanced hidden playable breeds
• resting places / small homes update with interior battlefield shape variety, distinct architecture, residents when safe
• better synchronization between overworld and combat, especially with foliage placement, so you can 'line up' fights the way you want them by running to a good spot in the overworld
• fishing and/or other chill minigames

Okay that's all for now! Thanks again! twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv P.S. I wanted nice screenshots but I'm busy so I looked through Steam and stole some faves. Shout out to Yagya/Unicorn who took all of these!

[ 2020-10-26 17:48:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Significant changes (good ones!) to Battlemage and Lich. Also, continued bugfixes and quality of life stuff. BATTLEMAGE:

• all ranks of Surge now have knockback 1
• Surge 1 damage buffed from 30 --> 35
• Surge 2 damage buffed from 45 --> 50
• Surge 3 damage reduced from 60 --> 40, + reduced to match Surge 2, but now has LONG CONE shape
• Thirst 1 shape changed from CONE to FIXED LENGTH (2) LINE
• Thirst 2 damage nerfed from 35 to 25
• Thirst 3 damage nerfed from 45 to 25, but now has SQUARE shape
• new ability Stalagmite 2: increases range from 1 --> 2 over base spell
• new ability Stalagmite 3: changes shape from CROSS to SQUARE
• Immovable is now available as an affinity option for earth affinity breeds

LICH:

• Dragonbreath 3 damage reduced from 60 to 40 but now has LONG CONE shape
• new ability Leach 2: reduces damage from 40 to 30 vs base spell but changes shape from NONE to CROSS
• new ability Leach 3: increases range from 2 to 3
• new ability Nimble 2: upgrades +move from +1 to +2

ASSORTED BUG / QOL STUFF:

• fix to a bug that mightve caused flickering or misplaced pointers
• fixed a bug causing the 'goblins rescued' ui to not autohide when entering the party menu or a new combat
• fixed a bug causing 'crater' to not hit the caster
• status effects in the overhead display will now autohide while in combat completion so they dont obscure exp numbers
• fixed a bug causing the loot display to not show the 8th item. additionally loot will now be sorted by quality/tier so that when there are too many items to display in the current UI, which only has 8 slots, the least interesting items will be the ones hidden.
• added (experimental) support for DX12 as a fallback for cards that don't support DX11 for whatever reason (should have no effect on you unless you're having trouble launching the game)
• fixed a bug causing spirits to sometimes spawn on top of buildings
• fixed a bug where if you started a combat in the middle of a big collider (like if you managed to worm your way on top of a building or something), it would essentially break your save. If you had a save file stuck in this broken-combat-setup state, loading it now will send you home. In general starting combats in these impossible locations will send you home in the future.
• added a note 'hits entire battlefield' to the tooltips for relevant abilities
• fixed a rounding error causing the scrollbar in memory selection to not show up until you had one row + 1 extra memory to display.
• you now get pointers to the nurseries (when nearby) if you skip the memory quest and go straight to the castle

[ 2020-10-26 00:16:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Continued bugfixes and quality of life stuff in response to early feedback.

• Caretakers will no longer always be right where you left them when you return to town. (fix for folks who got their caretakers stuck on rooftops etc)
• Nerfed the healing granted by the +regen armlet item so it's 1 per 8 ticks, matching the healing and tickrate on regen skills
• Fixed a bug with the way non-stacking status effects are refreshed that was causing passive effects to be overriden by timed effects.
• Fixed a bug that was causing caretaker pointers to get mixed up and point to the wrong location
• Fixed a bug that was causing your goblins to stop following you sometimes after you drag-drop rearranged them in party menus
• Hopeful fix to the bug causing your jump button to sometimes stop working (I believe this was happening after you won a battle and then dismissed the 'rescued townies ui' by entering the party menu, rather than with the dialogue buttons)
• The 'deep water' X graphic is now cleaner (wont distort to match the surface of the water so much) and also more visible in a wider variety of regions (now renders with a gradient of ui colors so it should show better against different water colors)
• Fixed a bug where when you drag-drop swapped your party members in the train menu, the skill chains wouldn't always update and would sometimes show the wrong party member's skills
• Minor tweak to the location of one of the Xs marked on Hork and Noggin's maps, so it's hopefully easier to find the site it refers to
• Fixed a bug with spellsword bedlam/nightmare where they weren't breaking destructible objects, despite saying they would in their tooltips
• Pointers will now update while you fly around in bird mode so you can more easily scope out hidden locations

[ 2020-10-24 00:54:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mostly small quality-of-life requests from new players. Won't change your experience too much.

• updated some text (side story dialogue stuff)
• when you unlock a new class, the randomized starting ability will now pick exclusively from non-passives
• new secondary keybind for bird (and for zoom in combat): arrow key up/down
• check the settings menu for a new 'y axis flip' setting
• tutorials will no longer auto-hide after viewing
• the map tutorial will now wait for you to close your first map before auto-showing
• audio will continue when the window loses focus now
• while fullscreen (or while holding right click to rotate while windowed) the game will now lock your cursor to stay within its window

edit: updated build number! quick fixes with the updated build: - fixed a bug causing Q/E input to invert with y axis flip - fixed a bug where dpad up/down was bound to zoom in combat

[ 2020-10-23 00:28:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just cleaning up the things that were bothering me while I streamed! Hello new players!

• Fixed a bug where the camera would pop when moving over some objects (ice, stalagmites) in combat.
• Fixed a bug causing water weirdness during simulation in interiors on edges.

[ 2020-10-21 23:22:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Good morning!! It's time for a dev stream!! I'm planning on starting a new game and playing from the beginning. I'll try to be attentive to chat and answer questions if you have them. Thanks for sticking with us through development! We're so proud of this game, and we hope you have a great time with it. - Badru

[ 2020-10-21 15:01:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Zoe here! Badru is a little busy putting some finishing touches on Tenderfoot so I thought Id update you on how things are going and tell you how excited we are for release this week! On release well be setting you up a sweet 10% off Tenderfoot, so be sure to get it while its on sale! Like I said, Badru has been glued to his desk trying to complete the miles and miles long task list, sending harried emails, trying to fix water flowing uphill (why), and various other things that I dont even want to know about. If you havent already, wishlist Tenderfoot Tactics so you can be the first to play it on Wednesday. Tell your mom, tell your cousins, tell your boss over Zoom! If you wanna hang out with the team, join us for a virtual release party around 6pm PST where well be streaming, chatting, and telling each other what were having for dinner. Check for a link in our socials. Again, were extremely excited for release and I will be very pumped to see all the nice things you have to say in your reviews ;) Well see you on Wednesday! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/ twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv (Badru poking my head in at the end here to say that water was only flowing uphill for like an hour between patches!! Also! I've been playing a lot and the game is great and I'm really hyped for you to play it!)

[ 2020-10-17 16:20:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Join Isa as he plays the new prologue! Rescheduled from 10/7 --> Sunday 10/11 at 10 am PDT. Steam servers were having some issues. Wish us luck! Also, of course, wishlist our game! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/ twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv

[ 2020-10-08 00:20:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's fall in the archipelago and the fog has come calling. Experience a single endless combat with some early to mid-tier goblin mages from Tenderfoot Tactics.
Tenderfoot Tactics: The Fall will be playable during the Autumn Steam Game Festival, starting October 7th. This demo showcases the terrain manipulation and dynamic natural systems that make Tenderfoot so unique. Since it skips past the first section of the game to show more advanced breeds, expect it to be a little overwhelming. Tactics fans, don't miss this one. Fight as long as you want. The enemy only grows stronger. Tenderfoot Tactics is coming out October 21st. Wishlist and follow! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/ twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv

[ 2020-10-07 17:00:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

A new prologue is on the horizon! Prepare yourselves! Join us for a dev stream just TWO WEEKS from our release day! 5-6pm PST on Wednesday October 7th. Be there! Also, wishlist our game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/ twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv

[ 2020-10-06 01:45:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi! This week I thought I'd talk a little about the overworld exploration half of Tenderfoot. Here's an unnarrated, unedited gameplay video showing a good little snippet of it: [previewyoutube=ZtKo0XljaoA;full][/previewyoutube] A rapidfire overview of some of the overworld systems, in the order they come up in the video:

The Boat

Lets you move at high speeds for prolonged periods with minimal effort across the water. Your fastest form of travel.

Maps

Found at towns and other discrete locations, these hand drawn artefacts can be used alongside points of interest and shoreline shapes, to suss out where the player finds themself, and where they might go to uncover new secrets.

The Bird

'Zoom out' inputs (middle mouse wheel or left trigger) will let you take to the skies above your goblins as a bird. Useful for getting the lay of the land and planning your route forward, this also reveals distant markers that might not be visible from the ground.

Impulse Markers

Your goblins have urges they want fulfilled! These impulses are marked as they occur, and will specify in a tooltip which goblin wants what, and how much experience they'll get when their impulse is satisfied. Maybe it's an urge to pick a nearby tansy, or to visit a distant town they've never seen, or even to seek out and confront a dangerous enemy.

Herbs

Useful or desirable plants grow all across the archipelago, though some are much rarer than others, and most can only be found in specific climates. At low levels, herbs are useful as equipment, but they can also be traded for stronger gear, and many have properties that can be useful in the clothes-dyeing process. Gathering herbs is also an easy and pleasant way to gain experience.

Crouch Sliding

Holding left-shift (or B/circle on gamepad) will let you crouch into a crunchy slide, which is driven by physics and, if used down a steep slope, can be very useful for making hasty escapes back to the water level, where you're safe in your boat. Also a real satisfying way to get down the other side of a tall hill you just slogged your way up.

Bird Nests

The more of these you find, the more birds in your flock, the higher you can fly, and the further you can travel from your party as a bird.

Towns

We visit Lixiviant in this clip, and don't do too much there: grab the map (each town has a detailed map of its surroundings), rest, and briefly poke around in the hoard (where reputation can be exchanged for trinkets). Towns also often have goblins with powerful items they'll trade for specific things they want, as well as dyers, where you can turn various mushrooms and berries and roots into fashionable new styles.

Resting Places

Make sure to rest up after traveling to a new area! If your goblins are knocked unconscious or flee and so find themselves scattered after a fight, they'll regroup at your last resting place. But resting will also give the fog a chance to grow.

The Fog

A living presence that grows unless fought back, the fog that covers the archipelago is the place to go if you're looking for danger. The fog will be pushed back by your presence in it, unless something nearby is holding it in place. The fog can turn herbs into 'fae weed' which hold its presence, and it can root itself firmly in buildings and caverns as well. Within the fog you'll encounter roaming fog creatures, looking for a fight. If you're careful or quick you should be able to avoid these, but they'll keep you on your toes.

A Brief Development Update

• added 10 new 'dungeons' where you'll be able to unlock the most powerful breeds
• added 2 new enemy types, wind sylphs and shadowmancers
• a lot of new spell vfx
• the OST is done and we're hyped to start showing some previews on social media! I also did a no-mic dev stream over the OST the other day if you want to check out the VOD: twitch.tv/badru (I stream dev every thursday at 4pm pacific)
• a lot of balance changes
• a lot of bug fixing
• a lot of optimization
• some really exciting new abilities for even the early breeds
• more extensive 'multi-classing': mage breeds can now unlock an 'affinity' slot that will let them remember a spell from another breed if it falls within their current breed's affinities (e.g. a lavamancer has an affinity for fire and earth spells)
• some new special abilities on artefacts

Can you believe Tenderfoot is coming out in less than a month? October 21st!!! Mark it on your calendars, fellow nerds! twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/

[ 2020-09-26 17:16:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Meet the Team

Hi!!

Badru: code, art, writing, design

I'm Badru, writing this. I'm an artist who's been making games since the hallowed Flash days of 2009 or so, though most of that work is bad and no you may not see it. I found a voice in games leading the team making Eidolon, a massive, exploratory hiking, survival, and archaeological narrative game we put out in late 2014. I actually started Tenderfoot right after that, if you can believe it! But I took quite a few diversions between then and now, including working on several other indie games (notably Viridi, which people On Here seem to really love!) as well as doing some short programming gigs for big tech, banks, and other vampires. Good Lord I'm glad to be back doing games! I do a lot of the work on Tenderfoot, including all of the code, all of the models and colors, much of the design, much of the team organization, and some of the writing. I love to read (lately obsessed with Ursula K Le Guin) and draw and paint, and also to smoke weed and watch dumb bullshit on youtube (ah, the duality of man). Lately my go-to games have been Battle Brothers (after work) and Fae Tactics (weekend mornings), with the occasional late night foray back into Overwatch. Actually, much of the rest of the team worked on Eidolon and Viridi too! Isa, Zoe, Michael. Madison first worked with us as far back as the Viridi Steam trailer!

Michael Bell: sound and music

Michael Bell, our musician and all around sound magician, is an attic-dwelling professor from the misty coastal town of Bellingham. Once advisor and now good friend and collaborator, Michael has worked with me since Eidolon. While his affinity is strongest for the chaotic noise of analog synths and distortion pedals, his range shows itself in soothing sounds the beloved Viridi OST. There's room for both sorts on Tenderfoot, and the amount, and quality, of music he's produced for this game is truly incredible. Plus, he knows just which poems to send me when I'm in a deep despair and need a wise word to pull me out.

Isa Hutchinson: writing and design

Isa Hutchinson is an old friend of mine, and truly one of the best. He introduced me to Catan and then a whole world of modern board games back in the early aughts, and continues to be a great game design influence. Isa is my link to the world of soulslikes, multi-hour spreadsheet eurogames, and other cruel and decadent playthings. Isa does much of the writing and a significant amount of game design on Tenderfoot.

Taylor Thomas: ux design

Taylor Thomas is a new collaborator for me (what a thrill!!) and hails from the world of product design, where she's worked on Real, Physical Objects for many years. She brings to Tenderfoot her extensive experience with designing for human interaction, and was crucial to the huge UI/UX redesign we did after the Foreverlands prologue. She's also possibly the most gamer of us all (big respect), plays CoD, watches twitch, and frequently informs me of major gaming trends I should really have heard of already.

Zoe Vartanian: graphic design, voice

Zoe Vartanian, (Borat voice) My Wife, has worked with me on probably everything? But most importantly was the creative lead on Viridi. On Tenderfoot she's done a lot of editing and feedback and uhhh emotional support incidental to living with me, but more importantly and officially, she's done all of the UI work (to Taylor's specs) post-Foreverlands. By day Zoe's the graphic designer for the University of Washington's College of the Environment. By night she's a painter and a cook and a dog enthusiast. She's beautiful from afar but smelly up close. Just kidding she smells nice too. Also, she voices the goblins in the game, mostly!

Madison Pathe: video editor

Madison Pathe, who I've known as far back as elementary school, has made a career as an editor for television, and is applying those skills to help us with our various video needs for Tenderfoot. You'd be surprised how much work it is making trailers and other videos for a game! We're so lucky and grateful to have someone who actually knows what she's doing there. She's a lover of modern board games, and moody videogames, and has a long history with Nintendo games especially, I think, though lately she's been trying to get me into the Witcher III (maybe when this videogame is out I will have time to play a videogame).

Player Two PR

And lately, we're so grateful to have some PR help from Charlene Lebrun and her amazing team at Player Two PR ( Chris Patrick and Adolfo Aguirre ). PR is not a thing I ever wanted to do, but it's so important if you want to survive out here. I can't say how glad I am to have these excellent people fighting for us.

A Brief Development Update

Okay okay, so that's us! Now then - a little update on where we are with development: We just had our first couple beta testers finish the game (well, reach the ending scene), with each having played 40+ hours! (And they're both still playing!) I believe that's having restarted to try out different builds and playstyles, and a very focused critical path run could probably be more like 10-15 hours, but it's hard to say, and I'm very pleased that the game is holding people's attention so long. The [strike]classes[/strike] breeds all have solid builds, though we're continuing to shift skills around and hone things in. All of the planned dungeons and towns and artefacts are implemented. Still got some bugs and some vfx to work through, and I'll certainly be refining the systems, but the game is coming together fast! This is always one of the most exciting times of game development, but especially so for this one, given it's been such a long trek, and has really defined my young adult life. I'm turning 30 next year! Feels like the end of an era, a major accomplishment of my 20s. I barely knew what I was doing when I started this game. Nowadays I'm so powerful I'm practically a God!

Trinkets and Other Things

In the realm of delicious new Tenderfoot media for you to consume, here's a freshly minted deep dive where Isa talks you through some of the interesting special modifiers on trinkets, showing how they let you customize and complicate even the simple abilities of early breeds in the game. [previewyoutube=qs8RzEJCYAk;full][/previewyoutube] And another new and exciting thing: weekly dev streams! Every Thursday from 4pm-6pm PST, I'll be streaming some live dev work, mostly VFX work for high tier classes, I think, with Isa hanging out with me in chat. The first couple weeks have VODs up on my twitch, where you should most certainly navigate and smash that follow button: twitch.tv/badru If you somehow missed it, here's our announcement trailer! The game's releasing October 21st! Mark it in your calendars! [previewyoutube=yBOl6AxRsUM;full][/previewyoutube] Also, we've been posting some breed previews, among other things, to our various social channels. Check it out: twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact facebook.com/TenderfootTactics instagram.com/icewatergames/ discord.gg/B82BDEv Okay that's all for now! Remember to call all your estranged friends and family and tell them to wishlist our game! Ok bye! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/

[ 2020-09-11 22:12:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Big hype!! New trailer on the store page with a bunch of previously not seen stuff in it! Tenderfoot Tactics is coming out on Steam on October 21st! - Badru https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/

[ 2020-08-28 21:11:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi Steam! Been a minute. We've just announced that we're going to be showing something new and big in GamesRadar's Future Games Show this Friday () so you should probably be excited about that!! Inevitably we'll update you over here too, but it might be fun to watch it live. Also, enjoy this freshly minted gameplay deep dive, in which Isa plays an early game combat, talking through some of the different basic systems in the game and how they impact strategy. We hope to do more videos of this kind, so let us know what you like about it, and what you'd like to know more about! [previewyoutube=HyY2YETVDsc;full][/previewyoutube] And finally, we've also recently announced that we're now running a private beta on the Ice Water Games discord. We'll be letting just a few people in per week from now until release. If you'd like to help out, head over to the discord, assign yourself the tenderfoot role, and look in the pins of the #dev chat to find our volunteer-soliciting post. https://discord.gg/vGZtZW3 Okay that's all for now! The game's getting *real* good. Can't wait to show you more. - Badru

[ 2020-08-23 18:35:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Come chill with us while we play through our demo and answer questions! Isa (Systems Design, Writing) will be playing, and Badru (Code, Art, Writing, Design, Project Direction) will be hanging out on voice chat. Other team members may or may not attend. A mystery!!! Ok see you soon! - Badru

[ 2020-06-17 20:50:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Festival of the Spirit is a short (maybe a couple hours) demo of some of Tenderfoot's core systems, themed as a short prequel story that takes place long before the events of the main game.

Featuring:

• Our novel grid-based combat system, inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics
• Songs that grow plants, fire arrows, and other nature-manipulating abilities
• Preview of Tenderfoot Tactics' town system, including a town hoard and dyers
• A small island of the archipelago, covered with herbs and berries to pick

Because the main game is quite long, and it takes some time for players to learn the systems enough to engage with the higher level classes, this demo mainly focuses on the starting goblin breed, although several other evolutions are available to play as or against. We hope you enjoy this thing we've made for you!

[ 2020-06-16 17:02:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Join Isa and Badru for a livestream on 6/16 at 4pm PDT! We'll be streaming straight to the game's Steam page, but feel free to join us on Discord to discuss before and after the event!

[ 2020-06-16 02:21:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's the yearly Festival of the Spirit and this time, the grand prize is yours, you just know it! A small prequel story to Tenderfoot Tactics, an open world tactics RPG. [previewyoutube=QW7FQIIA1sE;full][/previewyoutube] Festival of the Spirit is a short (maybe a couple hours) demo of some of Tenderfoot's core systems, themed as a short prequel story that takes place long before the events of the main game.

Featuring:

• Our novel grid-based combat system, inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics
• Songs that grow plants, fire arrows, and other nature-manipulating abilities
• Preview of Tenderfoot Tactics' town system, including a town hoard and dyers
• A small island of the archipelago, covered with herbs and berries to pick

Because the main game is quite long, and it takes some time for players to learn the systems enough to engage with the higher level classes, this demo mainly focuses on the starting goblin breed, although several other evolutions are available to play as or against. We'll likely be announcing Q&A and livestream events that'll take place during the Festival, so be sure to follow Tenderfoot Tactics so you don't miss out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/

[ 2020-06-12 16:00:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello!! We've just announced today that we'll be self-publishing Tenderfoot Tactics through Ice Water Games. This might not seem like a big deal, idk. It's a big deal for us though! Ice Water Games is a label that most of the Tenderfoot team has been a part of since it was first founded to publish Eidolon. It's a collectively owned and democratically run project, and publishing through it rather than signing with someone else means betting on ourselves and investing in a communally owned resource. IWG's history has been artier and less dorky than Tenderfoot, and by doing this I hope we're both saying: Tenderfoot is arty, actually, in the ways that matter and also, arts outlets should be treating 'lowbrow' fantastical genre work as serious and worth playing. Probably more exciting, our Steam page has all new screenshots and a fresh gameplay recording with the new UI. Check it out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/

[ 2020-03-10 03:39:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/969540/Pattern/

[ 2020-02-27 22:35:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

In the prologue, there's some difficult memory game required to keep straight which of your goblins is which. You can tell who's what evolution obviously, but then how to remember which of your scouts is a strangler vs a grenadier vs a singer? Obviously real important, just for basic gameplay purposes! I also missed a feeling from early on in development, of playing dress-up with your little dolls. Back then, in the elden days of 2018, you used to be able to put different clothes on your little mans (not yet canonically little gobs), and there's something thematically really appropriate with that feeling. (If you're one of those people that sees early dev screenshots and gets too many ideas DON'T look below!! This image is from mid 2018!!)
Here's a quote from early design documents about your relationship as a player/spirit to your gobilns: Goblins are your soft, strange body. You think of them as a toy you can play with, and they are in some ways beneath you and your level of understanding the world, but simple and chaotic things have a sort of intelligence of their own. Wild goblins might wear whatever they like, but claimed goblins wear just what you want them to. The clothing is an expression of dominance over them. We cut the dress-up functionality in order to instead have clear and descriptive silhouettes, which makes gameplay significantly more readable, and lets us do more interesting things with body shapes (complex body shapes * dress up with 3D meshes = a big mess). There's also a sense in which this highly descriptive fixed-look direction is appropriate for our narrative goals. Here's the end of that above snippet, from our current production document: The clothing is an expression of dominance over them, and its important that the clothing simplifies them to functional archetypes. For the game - claimed goblins should have clear outfits with clear origins that exemplify the functionality of the evolution to the spirit.
A wizard is a tool that serves a purpose, and as both the maker and user of that tool it makes sense you would shape it in a way descriptive of that purpose. But still, it was kind of a regret to not get to try on different hats and skirts and swords and such. So when we talked about customizing your unit's look with color at least, it felt worth doing the work to make that viable.
In the prologue, there's a 'rename' menu already. We've now expanded that to a broader 'groom' menu and added a variety of skin/fur colors to swap between freely. Goblins start with a random skin color but that can be reassigned. It makes it quite intuitive to remember - Pascal is my teal scout, the singer, my red scout Willow is the strangler, etc. In addition, the herbs I've talked about before a bit (you can collect fae weed to forget skills) - well, when those plants grow in safe areas outside of the fog, they can become a variety of different herbs, fungi, and other foliage, depending on the region of the archipelago they grow in. Some of the plants in the game now: blueberry, juniper, madder root, dyer's mazegill, mint, horseradish root... there are about 20 of these so far. Many of them have properties that would be useful in natural dyeing. And while that's not the only way you can use them - they're also equipable, and some NPGs (non-player goblins) will trade you for them - it's certainly the most glamorous thing to do with a plant.
One of the features of goblin towns that makes them worth going out of your way to visit is their dyers. Dyeing is a complex process that benefits from skill and the proper setup, not something to be done willy-nilly on the road. But bring dyers some pigmentation and some binding mordant and they'll happily help you out. Some towns may even have some regional pigmentation or mordants in their town hoard, if they like you enough to let you use some, and some dyers may specialize in certain colors as a result of local fashion.
On the development end, dying was really fun to delve into. My background, before game programming, is in painting, with a special focus and interest in color. The granular details of color mixing with physical pigments is something you never really have to understand when working digitally. I'm going to explain it badly, but still probably more accurately than your high school art teacher did. WARNING: Badly over-explaining light and pigment interactions for the rest of this post. Materials take in light, let it bounce around within them, absorb some parts of the color spectrum better than others, and then the light bounces back out of them and into your eye, and the remaining light, having changed in weight of spectrum, is assembled in the viewer to become a specific color. Shine a white light (a light with a high amount of a broad spectrum of colors represented equally appears white) on a red material and it'll absorb much of the non-red light, and reflect the remaining (red) light back into your eye. Your eye and brain together interpret the light and understand the color as red. Imagine pigment like a liquid filled with little flecks of different colors. A red-fleck-filled pigment will absorb non-red parts of the light spectrum and reflect red parts. Mix that with a blue-fleck-filled pigment, and what you have isn't purple flecks, but actually a liquid with both blue and red flecks. The blue absorbs some non-blue light, and the red absorbs some non-red light, and the light that escapes, which has some weight in the blue part of the spectrum and some in the red, is understood by us as purple. If it was the case that the blue flecks actually absorbed _all_ non-blue light, and the red flecks absorbed all non-red light, you can imagine that no light at all would remain to escape, and the object would appear black. But that's obviously not our experience! And the reason why is that these pigments aren't pure in their absorption, but are instead best understood as having a sort of 'reflectance curve' - maybe this blue pigment reflects only 15% of orange-yellow light, absorbing the other 85%, but reflects more like 50% of red light.
One way to simulate the mix of two pigments to rough out these reflectance curves for each pigment and then average them. The result is a good approximation of what a mixed pigment's reflectance curve would be, which then, when mixed with whatever light you're shining into the pigment, can be used to decode a local color: the thing we actually need to represent the object digitally. In digital space, we just have red, green, and blue lights and we mix them to get a final color. The saved color has no information built in about how, were it real, its reflectance curve would function against light. So I really hoped, at first, that I could fudge this. That I could somehow average colors hues and saturations and in so doing get an okay rough estimate. But it just doesn't work out that way. Everything I tried would end up with bizarre resultant hues that were just intuitively, obviously wrong, until I had such a dumb quilt of 'sorta' approximations that it just made no sense to continue that way. My current implementation is still a hack, but it mimics reality enough to have satisfying results. I have hand-authored reflectance curves for imaginary pure red, green, and blue pigments. When I add a dye to a mixture, I build an approximate reflectance curve for it by averaging these R, G, and B reflectance curves in the amounts indicated by that dye's RGB color. I then average these curves for all the dyes present (weighted per dye, as some natural dyes are more persistent than others, and also by amount added, as you can add say 7 blueberries and 1 acorn, for a different color than 3 blueberries and 6 acorns). Then I sample that averaged reflectance curve at a bunch of points along the light spectrum, essentially simulating shining a white light into it, summing up and averaging out those samples to get a final local color. The results feel naturalistic and a bit chaotic, which is perfect for a gameplay simulation of natural dye mixing as performed by goblins. I'm quite happy with how special it feels to mix a unique color for a particular gob.
Okay well that's enough of that. Sorry for letting myself get into it so far, haha. Next time I think I'll talk more about towns and the reputation system? We'll see. And soon enough, look for us to announce a release window, and... some other stuff. Ok bye! Tell all your friends to wishlist our game! Thanks! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/

[ 2020-02-05 17:18:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

In the Foreverlands prologue, experience works like this: at the end of a battle, if you won, the game calculates how difficult that battle was for you, by comparing your 'total party level' with the fight's 'challenge rating.' It then takes whatever experience value that fight was worth, and grants it in full to each of the goblins who were still conscious at the end of the fight. The biggest piece of feedback we got about this was that it felt overly punishing to fragile breeds, like Spellsword, who are more likely to die before the end of a fight. Actually, Spellsword is an especially good example, because that breed is very powerful when used as a sort of bomb - using Breaker to jump behind enemy lines and then self-immolating with Nightmare. But doing so gives it no experience whatsoever. This system encourages really defensive play, which personally I love the more high risk, high reward style of play, and I want it to be viable. As I've been working on the overworld and getting a sense of the broader design for Tenderfoot, I've been thinking a lot about pacing, and this is another issue with the Foreverlands system. For skillful players who play defensively, the above described system results in large numbers of your units levelling up completely in sync with each other. So after one fight you'll have no new skill points to play with, and then after another you'll suddenly have 4 level-ups to slowly shuffle through menus and attribute. It sucks! The Foreverlands has an accelerated levelling system, too, and in the main game, where levels are further between, having all of your units synced up in exp means long periods of play where there's no change in your playstyle. It's alright, honestly, but it's obviously not ideal! My go-to for solving design problems, stealing solutions from FFT, was a non-option this time, unfortunately. FFT's experience system, which grants exp per action successfully taken, encourages incredibly boring cheesing, spamming haste, punching yourself to heal yourself next round, etc. We talked through quite a few other games' implementations, trying to find something that felt rock solid. My favorite discovery from these conversations was brought up by an old friend and collaborator (worked with us on Eidolon), Jacob Leach, who explained Chrono Cross's experience system. That game essentially does away with grinding entirely, instead granting level ups after boss fights. So at any point in the game, you're exactly the level they designed the content for. This seems so smart and cool and I wonder why more games don't try it. Tying narrative moments to system progression. However, that's not the direction we're heading with Tenderfoot. I like the sloppy openness that we get from having grindable fog like we do. The whole map is designed around giving paths for players who prefer to grind easy fights _and_ paths for players who prefer to rush the hard fights early. I don't want to ditch that design ethos. So, long story aside, sorry, here's where we've ended up.
When you knock out a fog-goblin in a battle, their bones clatter to the ground, and left behind is a lingering cloud of spirit. That cloud lives on that grid space until you move a friendly unit on or through it, at which point the cloud's held experience (calculated based on the killed unit's challenge rating) is immediately granted to that unit. Spirit clouds also heal a small amount, and if the unit levels up in combat from the experience, they're healed to full. Any leftover experience clouds at the end of a battle are distributed among living goblins, with goblins nearer the clouds getting proportionally more of the experience. I LOVE the way this plays out. Players have a lot of control over which of their units gets experience when, but there are a ton of complicating factors. The units closest to danger, most unlikely to get experience at the end of a battle (due to having been knocked out), are nearest to the clouds. And if they're actively taking damage, you're encouraged to use the clouds' healing to try to keep them alive. Aggressive play is rewarded by the healing bit especially. The clouds being tied to grid spaces, and being granted to units moving through them and not just onto them, really dramatically changes the meaning of specific move actions taken in battle. Important to note I'm not the only combat designer (thank you Isa), but my personal ethos when it comes to Tenderfoot's combat has been to design actions that both alter and are altered by the board state, so that every system interacts with and complicates every other system, and decisions have cascading side-effects you always need to consider against their primary effect. Experience clouds obviously fit so nicely into this framework, creating new cascading side effects that make you care where enemies die, how you can control the areas of the map where clouds live, how you can safely move the right units through those clouds to either heal or distribute experience where you want it.
Feeling

[ 2019-12-20 17:21:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tenderfoot Tactics has a huge open world. Like irresponsibly huge, for the size of our team. There will be a lot of open, undesigned wilderness. This is good, not accidental, not regrettable - Tenderfoot is very much about naturalness, and undesigned spaces are an important piece of how we're embracing that. They're quiet bits, important for pacing.
But still, we don't want that natural space to be empty of anything interesting. Within the fog, this isn't a problem - the world will be full of horrible things to sneak by or fight through. But we want people to love spending time in the areas they've cleared fog out of. We want those places to feel alive, happy, and worth visiting. Have it be a triumph to have returned the world to a wild state, have that place feel like a place that you're glad exists.

Herbs! Herbs! Herbs!

One long-held plan for this has been to have collectible herbs and other plants naturally grow in specific biomes. We plan to have sort of side-quests where a goblin craftsperson can make you a useful equip out of certain plants, and to fulfil that you could take a leisurely boat around the safe periphery, gathering what you need from where you need it. Sounds pleasant!!
(ignore our temp ui lol) On first implementation, the herbs grew in the fog as well, which is fine, but takes away the specialness of having a healthy and happy area clean of the fog, where useful things can grow.

Forgetting

We've also been having a second design discussion around skill swapping. In the prologue, skills can be freely forgotten and relearned at will. It's appropriately fun and fast for the chaotic, brief experience of the Foreverlands, but it leads to your gobilns feeling kind of interchangeable and amorphous and forgettable. We wanted to find an elegant solution where players who want to respec need to spend some time and intention making it possible to do so. What we've done is made it so that any herb that would grow in a foggy area instead grows in as 'fae weed', a sort of fog-corrupted plant analogous to the fog-goblins. Fae weed can be plucked and equipped like other plants, but it also serves the purpose of being consumable. Your goblins now forget skills by eating fae weed. I like the logic of this. It makes some fictional sense that the fog, which brings some sort of self-identity-collapsing chaos to the goblins it touches, also sucks the color from plants in the area - and those plants become infused with that mind-erasing power.
Currently at least, we've also made it so that plucking fae weed knocks the fog out of a large area nearby - the same thing that happens when you defeat a fog spirit. It's nice because it feels like weeding to maintain the land's proper biome, keeping the fog at bay, without combat. But of course it, like everything else, could change. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/

[ 2019-11-30 00:30:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

An Exploratory 3D Overworld for a Strategy Game?

This is probably the thing I've posted most actively about post-Foreverlands, on Twitter anyway, because I find it really cheesy and annoying and fun, in a community of other developers, to be spending time on a system that feels completely out of genre and overscoped for the game we're making. But it isn't! It's central to what we're making, actually. Tenderfoot's a TRPG, sure, but it's also, deep, deep in its heart, a game about nature and place, exploration and adventure. One of the very first, guiding decisions in Tenderfoot's development was the decision to ditch the conventional map overworld and lean into a fully 3D one. I went this direction for the same reason we did so with Eidolon, Tenderfoot's predecessor: perspective is an excellent design tool. We have this built in logic to The Way Vision Works that justifies having objects hard to decipher when far away but richly detailed when close up, and gives sensible logic for a smooth transition between. In a game about travel, exploration, and discovery, of COURSE we want the feeling of seeing something interesting but unclear to investigate from far off, making the long and intentional journey there, and then finding out what it is in full detail at the end, with the ability to look at any props from all angles, and physical access to any goods discovered.
One of the things we learned through the making of Eidolon was that in a game that spends a lot of time on navigation, the means of navigation become super important. We were so happy we leaned into physical maps, the compass, the binoculars, to give the player the experience of performing navigation themselves. Something we realized by the end of Eidolon's development, but never delivered on exactly, is that Eidolon is also significantly a game about the traversal of landscapes - and that part, which I thought of at the time as the 'micro-decisions' of play (do I go around that tree to the left or right), was mostly neglected, filled in by having collectibles scattered everywhere (I'll go left because I can pluck that mushroom to the left of the tree that way). But I always regretted not working in more playful traversal.

Breath of the Wild & Meaningful Terrain

I usually end up being a contrarian jerk when it comes to big budget corp-games, but I actually thought Breath of the Wild was fabulous in a lot of ways, especially when it came to exploration and world traversal. Especially traversal. With climbing and gliding, elevation change becomes so important, and the decision about how to get from one place to the next is filled with interesting little decisions, tiny arcs of narrative build and satisfaction. Something that stuck in my mind as especially brilliant in BotW was the way the horse would autopath along roads, giving you time to look around with your spyglass. The feeling of making progress along a journey while scoping out the area nearby was really wonderful, and not something most games afford. So I borrowed that design.

The Open Water

Looking at Tenderfoot with Eidolon behind me, it felt important to suffuse the landscape with gameplay meaning, to make it so whatever visual/logical/narrative changes there are across the surface of the world, those things have meaning to the gameplay system of traversal. One of the first decisions on that front was to make open water safe, fast. Like with BotW's horse, the canoe in Tenderfoot picks up speed and maintains it. Like with the main roads in BotW, the water is a relatively safe zone, meant for rapid travel, combat-free. In place of a scope, Tenderfoot has birds. On canoe trips, a player can take to the sky, surveying nearby islands or behind hills, finding places they might want to divert to later on. And because of the functionality of the canoe, the map is cut into interesting route decisions: do we cross that relatively thin body of land to make a straight-shot to our destination, risking combat, or worse, becoming disoriented in the fog, or will it end up quicker and safer to take the long route around it in a boat? What can I see that I might encounter on that longer route? Maybe an island I haven't explored yet, or even some distant boxy shapes that might be a structure of some sort.

The Crouch-slide

One result of the canoe's functionality in Tenderfoot is that going uphill means going further from the safety of sea-level. Something I loved from BotW is the natural narrative cycle of struggling up a steep cliff followed by the release and freedom of gliding down. We're mirroring that somewhat with our slide system. A player struggles up a hill, moving slowly and having to be very careful not to be seen by any roving enemies. And at the top, they crest to see the other side, and then plummet down at high speeds to return to the freedom and safety of the open water. The result of adding crouch-sliding to Tenderfoot has been tremendous. It feels playful and joyful. It creates small natural cycles that do a Lot for the pacing of exploration.

A Final Note: The State of the Industry

Death Stranding is a game I'm playing currently that is absolutely excelling at playing with these sorts of systems, that turn the shape and texture of the landscape into meaningful interactables for the whole play experience, rather than just for the eye. I've been saying this since BotW, but I think that for a certain branch of 'walking sim' descendents, the sort interested in evoking the feelings of travel across a landscape of some kind, this is going to be an area of design worth delving deeply into over the next 5-10 years. It's been so interesting seeing the way DS leans a completely different direction from BotW, and I can see so much room in all directions around. It's an exciting time to be working in games, for sure. Until next time! Thanks for following along while we make this unbelievably grand and complex thing. - Badru

[ 2019-11-20 00:56:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Several Interrelated Issues

(1) Something I love from Final Fantasy Tactics is the way it encourages you to train a job you might not use otherwise, in order to get a specific skill synergy with the job you know you're headed for. It feels like charting out your own education or personal growth, making sacrifices to complete it deliberately over time, and in the end you've built something specialized out of your own creativity and willpower. This is something I felt was seriously lacking from the Foreverlands version of Tenderfoot's evolution system. (2) I also felt that classes in Tenderfoot were a bit too tightly designed, and wanted to leave room for players to build something we didn't expect. (3) Finally, we got some helpful feedback from the prologue that it felt bad to evolve a goblin and have them completely reset their progress. This makes a lot of sense! In an RPG, you want to feel character continuity and growth, and the full-reset evolution system spoiled that.

Introducing: The Genetic Memory Slot

As a resolution to the above, we've added to all units a single skill slot which lets you load any known skill from any class. It costs no points to use and is free to swap out any time (out of combat only, of course). We're calling it, for now, a 'genetic memory' slot.
(ignore the clumsy temporary UI while we polish up our new look!) It's an important balance that goblins do become somewhat weaker when you switch them into a level 1 evolution. It forces you to not become too reliant on over-leveled units, foregrounding whichever goblin hasn't evolved yet as the most powerful in your party. With the new system we get a little bit of both - you lose all but one of your old skills, forcing you to treat the newly evolved goblin as a weaker unit in the next fight, but in choosing your favorite/most-used skill as a memory, you end up preserving some of that unit's character and bringing it into its new shape. We also already are seeing some really interesting incidental builds. Archers that round out their effective range with Shortbow. Knights with Song or Grenade. Wizards with Frag Lance. The most exciting thing about this is that it's naturally multiplicative. There are about 150 planned unique skills in the game, and about 30 evolutions, putting the potential combinations of (memory skill x evolution) in the thousands.
We might not yet be exactly where we'll end up, and certainly aren't promising we'll ship this system in this precise state, but some lightweight multiclassing like this feels like the right direction to be heading to take the promise of the prologue and turn it into something richer and fuller.

[ 2019-11-12 22:22:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi all! Up until last month, the team for Tenderfoot Tactics had been:

• Badru (me! project direction, art and code, design and writing)
• Michael Bell (sound and music)
• Isa Hutchinson (design and writing)

We've since added two new collaborators: Zoe Vartanian you might know as the creative director, artist, and UI designer from Viridi - or from her role doing the UI for Eidolon. She's coming on to make beautiful UI for Tenderfoot. She also did all of the voice acting for the goblins, haha. Zoe is always amazing to work with. Having her on the team actually means that the entire Viridi team is now working on Tenderfoot, which is pretty cool!! Getting the band back together Taylor Thomas is a new collaborator I'm really excited to be working with - she comes from the world of industrial/product design, and is helping out with a major UX overhaul. Gonna fix all our silly unusable UI from the prologue - which we got a ton of useful feedback about, thank you so much! UI/UX have been really complex and large parts of this project, and as we're falling into a more solidified version of the combat and overworld systems, it's a fabulous time to bring fresh eyes to it. We've been working on it for a month or so, and I can't wait to get to the point where we can show more screenshots! It's all so much better!!

[ 2019-11-05 22:14:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tenderfoot Tactics: The Foreverlands is live now: https://sonofbadru.itch.io/foreverlands
The Foreverlands is an ancillary tale told in the world of Tenderfoot Tactics. It also serves as a demo of the first handful of classes and the combat systems in their current state (still in development). Thanks for looking! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/

[ 2019-09-23 17:45:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Foreverlands - a prologue to Tenderfoot Tactics meant to introduce the world and showcase a slice of the still-in-development gameplay - will be releasing for free on itch.io this Monday, the 23rd of September. Keep your eyes peeled!

[ 2019-09-20 22:33:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

TENDERFOOT TACTICS: THE FOREVERLANDS

An ancillary tale / free prequel game / something of a combat demo. Make sure you don't miss it by getting on our mailing list!
The Foreverlands will tell a small story to introduce the world of Tenderfoot - and show the current state of gameplay for the first 7 evolutions. Note that even the parts of the 'full' game included in this freebie (those first 7 evolutions, the UI, the controls, etc) won't be representative of their state in the final game. There are lots of improvements we want to make. But we think they're rad already! I'm also sending out advance keys to select press. Get in touch if you'd like to take an early look! (hey@badru.graphics) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/

DEVELOPMENT UPDATE

• Expanded and refined the first tier of evolutions - those that will be playable in the Foreverlands - with a bevy of new skills, a first pass at sound and visual effects, some tweaks in general appearance.

• Built a system to associate overworld biomes with different combat map types, enemy types, enemy team compositions, and natural system settings. So for instance an arid, rocky biome might now: have large rocks instead of trees in combat, start with no water or plants on the map, have a very low rate of moisture input from map edges (normally soil moisture is replenished from the edge of the map to replace the moisture extracted by growing plants - now, a low moisture zone won't naturally support plant life unless you bring a lot of water into the map with spells), have maps that start with more cliffs, and feature a certain subset of enemy types, like our new 'ember' enemy, arranged in team compositions designed for a certain player level range. This adds a lot of texture to exploration and progression across the map.
• Made a huge amount of quality of life updates. Added UI displaying more specific information about the simulation state, clarifying time passage during actions. Improved keyboard/mouse camera feel. Added hotkeys for the action menu. Et, cetera.
• Expanded our cast of non-playable enemy types!

• Enemies in the overworld now have a wider aggro radius when you're significantly lower level than them, and a very narrow radius when you're higher level, making low level zones easy to traverse as you level out of them. Enemies also now 'leash,' eventually giving up if you run far away from where they originally saw you and started chasing you.
• Finished replacing our 'steep ground is difficult' system with cliffs, and subtley modified the way earth spells interact with those cliffs for more naturalistic effects.
• Added a 'jump' button in the overworld because, I don't know, I have a grudge against games that don't let you jump, and I don't have anyone to stop me. Very seriously planning on adding a 'crouch slide' button when I have a manic moment and can allow myself to do something so nonessential.

Okay, that's all for now! Thanks for sticking with us! Talk to you soon!

[ 2019-09-04 23:30:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

You last heard from me when we put out the World Teaser a couple months ago. Making that involved a lot of work on the story and overworld systems, but since finishing it I've been back focusing in on combat again. There's a huge number of quality-of-life improvements we've been making to the UI/controls/etc, from feedback we got with our first round of streamer demos back in late spring, but that's not very fun to talk about, so instead let's talk about the most fun I've had in a while: implementing the whole next tier of evolutions!

Evolution Tiers

The evolutions (classes) available in the streamer demo are the set planned to be available to the player straight away from the beginning of the game in the final build: Scout, Knight, Battlemage, Spellsword, Archer, Wizard, Woodswitch. These have a sort of branching structure from Scout (simple, broad) to Knight (melee) / Archer (ranged) and from those to more aggressive and more defensive ranged and melee spellcasters. In this set of evolutions is a very broad taste of what kinds of abilities are available in Tenderfoot. After [major story event], the player will unlock ~10 more evolutions, what I've been calling tier 2: 5 each ranged and melee, representing pairings of elements (other than fire/plant, the forbidden flavor). The elements have fairly focused characteristics (water casters are slippery, fire casters are dangerous) that these pairings tend to go deeply into, and in many cases the paired elements have been developed into very specific and elaborate movesets.
For instance the fire/water mages both have electric spells, which tend to be teleports that hurt the caster, start fires where they travel, and if they touch water spread to effect every unit in that body of water. (Slippery and dangerous!) Or the melee earth/water mage, the Worm, has abilities like Burrow (long ranged teleport that requires the destination to be moist earth), Ram (straight line charge with knockback that breaks brush), and Thrash (AOE that creates water and stacks a damage-buffing 'rage' effect). I wish we had pretty models and fx done so we could show them off in gifs but you'll just have to wait! For now just trust me when I say: They're SO COOL AND I AM SO EXCITED TO BE MAKING THIS GAME! The first tier of evolutions is nice groundwork and I think there's a lot to dig into there, but really working out tier 2 has made me so full of enthusiasm for what Tenderfoot's becoming. We also managed to add about 40 new spells in a week of work, including building the systems for major new concepts like status effects (poison, cocoon, blight, etc), terrain effects (lava, ice, etc), and more! There's gonna be an absolute Load of cool shit in this videogame, y'all. Oh and there's a planned third tier, to be unlocked after [second major story event], which will be ~ single element mages ~ and wow am I excited to get to those. But for now, more broad fixes to prepare for a second streamer demo.

Other things we've been up to:

> Building a story and world for the next demo to be less empty than the first. It'll have a bit of a peripheral story to tell, and some more structure to it. > Adding cliffs and jumping! So instead of "this terrain tile is too steep so it's now difficult to move on" we'll have "moving from this terrain tile to this requires hopping up a cliff, and costs more move." It's made terrain spells much more clear in their effect, and I think has just been a huge general improvement to the feeling of the game, but it has a lot of repercussions to iron out. Worth the time I think!
> Pre-combat setup! Long planned and long neglected, now (in dev builds) you can set up your initial unit placement and turn order however you like, which makes it much easier to strategize.
And more secret stuff, probably. -- Also, I've got a Patreon now, so if you want to help *financially* with this thing, you can do that! And we've got a Discord, if you want to come ask me questions about the game or just hang out and chat. Ok thanks for reading and bye! I'll try to post again here soon. I'm so busy making this dang game I don't find enough time to yell about it online, but I'm trying!

[ 2019-08-03 00:44:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610 I haven't been very loud about Tenderfoot until now because I've been waiting to get this teaser together to show off the open world, which is part of what makes it stand out among TRPGs. (I mean, also the combat is super deep and interesting and fun.) Anyway I'm really excited about it! It's a small team but all of us also worked on Eidolon and Viridi. Wishlist it! It really makes a huge difference! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYRQDGzXjZY

[ 2019-06-25 18:40:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi folks! First of all - I've started (slowly and individually) distributing access to our pre-alpha combat demo to streamers who play other games like it, or seem interested in the genre. If you know of anyone who might like Tenderfoot, let me know in the comments or at hey@badru.graphics. Now, I'd like to talk a little about the state of the combat systems as they live in that demo. I'll try not to go overly specific, but it'll be hard for me because I'm neck deep in it!

Turns

Like in Final Fantasy Tactics, your units have individual turns. On a unit's turn it may Act and Move once each, in either order. Except in very special cases, all units have the same move distance: 4 squares. Once you've played for a bit, this helps you develop an intuitive sense of threat zones. Movement is blocked by enemy units and impassable objects like trees - and you can use this fact to create bottlenecks or protect weaker units behind tougher ones. Certain environmental features like steep slopes, thick brush, and deep water are 'difficult terrain,' which afford only one square of movement at a time. Since the environment is constantly evolving, this becomes a crucial tactical element. A unit's Act options are derived from how its skill points are distributed within its current Evolution. Evolutions have specific character to what skills are available to them, and having a good squad loadout going into a tough fight is crucial. Actions tend to have clear effects (a 100% chance to deal a fixed amount of damage) which interact with the natural systems in ways that become difficult to predict many turns out.

Turn Order

One defining characteristic of Tenderfoot Tactics is the way turn order plays out. Flanking attacks (and certain spells, like the Woods Witch's FROST, or the Knight's INSULT) can push enemies back in the turn order. Because of this, a low damage flanking attack on a powerful enemy might turn the tide of a losing fight, if it puts your endangered, low-health units before that enemy in the turn order, giving them a chance to escape.

Side Effects + Natural Systems

The other essential factor that sets Tenderfoot Tactics apart is that almost all actions have side effects, and that those side effects interact with ongoing natural systems in ways that have a significant impact on play. The obvious example here would be FIRE ARROW, which does more damage than the un-upgraded Archer ATTACK action, since it places a lingering burn effect on the enemy, but also can backfire if the fire spreads to your own team. However there's much more depth to the systems in Tenderfoot than that basic example would imply! For instance, melee attacks have a tendency to destroy plants as a side effect. In the clearest case, this means breaking bushes that would otherwise be 'difficult terrain.' If you're attacking enemies in a bottleneck and breaking apart the brush that's crucially slowing them, you might think twice! And as you develop a deeper understanding of the systems, you realize there's many more results of a simple melee swing. Destroying plants with an attack can break the line of travel for a spreading fire, for instance, so that attacking an 'empty' space might prevent tremendous damage to your weak units. Or it might halt spreading grass, which you may want to prevent from proliferating into a zone of the map where you don't want to see brush popping up. Plant life also drains moisture out of the nearby area, so that destroying plants means making it possible for the terrain to further moisten, which can in the future make the terrain more resilient against fire, and more accepting of life.
One question I've seen from players as they first grapple with the mechanics of the early game is: What benefits are there to modifying the shape of the earth itself? Unless you create a very deep chasm or steep cliff, it doesn't create difficult terrain. Earth modification tends to feel underpowered or pointless, because it doesn't interact so directly. Although earth modification feels weak at first, it has the most dramatic and long-lasting side effects. The shape of the earth determines the way the water falls across it, which determines plant growth patterns, which determine fire routes and the shape of 'difficult terrain' on the map. So earth magic can exercise a lot of control over the battlefield. -- Okay I feel like that's enough said for now. What's next? Right now I'm working on the overworld systems, and hoping to show those (along with more hints at the story) with a new video in a couple weeks. While that's in the works, I think it might be interesting to do some little showcase updates on the Evolutions in the game so far. What do you think? Oh and reminder! I'm looking for streamers who might like this thing. If you, or a friend, or someone you follow might fit the bill, please do let me know, either in the comments or via email at hey@badru.graphics. We're running on a shoestring budget and don't have PR people or a publisher so any support is extremely helpful and appreciated!

[ 2019-06-01 22:21:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi y'all! As a very first update over here, I thought it'd be appropriate to give an outline of where the game is currently, and where I think it's heading. Let me know in the comments whether, for future updates, you'd rather see more raw development notes, world/story teaser features, design deep-dives, etc. But for now ~

WHAT WE'VE GOT

• a robust combat system
• interesting and performant natural systems for terrain shaping, soil moisture, water volume and velocity flow, plant growth, heat and fire
• plans for 27 playable evolutions
• prototyped designs for 13 of those
• implemented designs for 7 of those
• menus for learning and swapping skills, evolving and renaming gobs
• a vast overworld with lush regions and surreal transitions between
• first implementations for a couple goblin towns, with plans for many others (as well as being story locations, these will be places to snag new units)
• first implementations for several spirits (which will be custom encounters with interesting enemy compositions, and also a route to unlock new evolutions)
• a draft for the full scope of the story of the thing

Currently this is broken up in builds (to lock the story stuff away until it's ready) into an infinite-play mode called The Foreverlands, and a currently-locked mode which will eventually be The Chronicle.

WHERE WE'RE GOING

This is a tentative outline of my current development plans, and what you can hope to see when. Expect this to change, because life is chaos! SOON: like maybe next week? I'll be sending out a first playable to press and streamers. So if you write or stream, even if your channels are small, reach out! This'll just be the first third or so of the combat progression in the Foreverlands. JUNE: I've been working on the world systems a lot over the last couple months, and I'm hoping to, in the next month or so, be ready to put out a world teaser, to show more of what this place is like. SEPTEMBER: I'd like to put together a more developed demo, with a small story and world peripheral to the main stuff in Tenderfoot. We'll have put a good deal more work into the combat at this point, and hopefully stuff will be feeling pretty good. The story systems should be in place and it'll be a good opportunity to give people a fuller sense of what we're going for with Tenderfoot Tactics. OCTOBER: Tentative for sure, but I think we might release on Early Access to get live feedback as we polish up the combat systems. If that'd be something people would be interested in? And then, depending on how things hash out, I think the game might be ready for full release sometime between January and March of 2020. Hopefully, anyway! So, for the future, what kinds of things are y'all curious about, that you'd like to see featured in project updates?

[ 2019-05-18 18:46:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi! I'm Badru! I started Ice Water Games, lead the Eidolon team, did a bunch of colors and design and code on Viridi, and uhh did some other stuff too!! I just made a Steam Creator page for myself here, if you want to follow my work:
And hey also! I'm working on a new thing with some past collaborators (which may or may not end up coming out under the IWG label) - Michael Bell's doing the music and Isa Hutchinson's helping a bunch with design. It's a big open-world TRPG about wizardly goblins and fae spirits and elemental magics. Wishlist it if you're into the stuff we've worked on in the past? https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061610/Tenderfoot_Tactics/?curator_clanid=35059002 And also give it a follow! I think I'll be posting development updates over there very soon :)

[ 2019-05-15 19:38:04 CET ] [ Original post ]