He who controls the spice controls the universe.
That title quote is from the amazing novel of Dune. And I recently wrote an article on why I love (and I mean Loooove) the game Dune II:
Dune II took this setting as the inspiration for one of the first real-time strategy titles. It pioneered many of the forms and conventions that RTS games (indeed strategy games!) use in ways we still see today. Lest we forget that the children of Dune II have gone on to conquer the world, League of Legends, Dota 2, Clash Royale, Starcraft, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Total War and many, many others still have some DNA from this gem of a game. From the player’s direct control of resources, to tech-trees, to building units, to commanding an emergent army – and doing all of this in the same screen was mind blowing.
And here’s a video of that game:
Its #CthulhuThursday As the War Gets Apocalyptic
We’re into the final week of our Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics kicksrater campaign. So this week I’m going to be looking at that (ovs).
First we had a visitor to the studio to show off the game 🙂
I’ve also been thinking a lot about Cthulhu in the run-up to the game development and beyond and so from this I wrote this about how mainstream Cthulhu has become…
Lovecraft himself would never know the success and cultural impact this or any of his other works would have. When he died in 1937 he would only know that his works had reached a limited audience, never having made enough from his works to make a living as a writer.
Yet over 90 years since he set out the plot of The Call of Cthulhu, the idea, themes, and the eponymous creature has finally reached the mainstream. The majority of us have heard of “The Call of Cthulhu” in one form or another.
We’ve also shown off our Shoggoth tech!
So please do check out the campaign and join the fight for humanity!
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
XCOM Too – A New Turn-Based Strategy Project to Scratch any XCOM Itch
As a games designer I do (and need to) play a wide range of games. However, of the many genres of games out there, the one I most often find myself returning to is turn-based strategy.
There were many years when there was not a huge amount going on with the genre… those were lean years! But this is no longer the case, since the rebooted XCOM games – starting with 2012’s Enemy Unknown – has both re-ignited the mass interest in the turn-based strategy genre but also set a standard of what such a game can be. So as we head further into 2018, here’s what’s on my ‘XCOM Too’ radar…
Into the Breach – This is the new game by the people who made the excellent FTL. FTL was realtime, so it was interesting to me that they’ve got turn-based with their new title. Into the Breach just launched on Steam and, word is, it’s great. Personally I love the simple yet textured art style, and how they’ve made a TBS / puzzle game mash up.
Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics – This is on my radar because… well, I’m working on it, so it rightly needs a mention here! The game has a simple premise: fight the Nazis AND the spawn of Cthulhu in this exciting action / strategy / RPG game set in the award-winning Achtung! Cthulhu universe. We’ve prototyped this up using pen, dice, and paper and so we know the gameplay is excellent. I’m very much looking forward to it evolving and being released and from the support we’ve had on Kickstarterso are a lot of people.
Wargroove – I first started seeing this pop-up on my Twitter feed in the form of gorgeous little pixely unit animations. The game looks very much like a spiritual successor to Advance Wars and this is a very good thing, as I loved the series and played all of them for many, many *repeats word ‘many’ several more times* hours. However, despite seeming to reference that series, Wargroove definitely seems to have its own thing going on.
Phoenix Point – The godfather of turn-based strategy games – Julian Gollop – is back! If you aren’t aware, Julian is the influential designer behind a host of classic games, from Laser Squad to (of course) XCOM itself – though it was originally titled UFO: Enemy Unknown, of course! So the news that he’s funded and working on a new title is welcome to say the least! So far Phoenix Point seems to have many of the classic elements we demand of an XCOM game, but as it’s Julian making it, I’m super excited to see what he adds, changes, and evolves within the framework…
AVARIAvs (ultrafast Competitive Turn-Based Battles) – I backed this on Kickstarter and happy to see that it was fully-funded. This is a little different to a lot of TBS, in that its main focus is PvP, whereas most TBS games focus on campaign – I know games like XCOM have PvP, but PvP is not what you think of when you think “TBS”. As a studio, we’ve also been experimenting in this area, so it’s a space I’m interested in and, overall, I like how it’s expanding the genre.
Hope you enjoyed my quick runthough of upcoming TBS titles – did I miss any? Let me know!
The Second Weird War
I wrote a thing for Auroch Digital’s Medium articles looking at supernatural fiction that takes WW2 as the jumping off point…
On the Allied side there is the strange case of Helen Duncan, a Scottish medium who has the dubious honour of being the last person imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735. Her arrest came from a seance she conducted where it was alleged she revealed that the HMS Barham had been sunk — a classified snippet of information at that time.
With that background in mind, in this article I’ll examine some selected examples where WW2 has become a canvas for the painting on of a supernatural terror onto the real horror of war…
Do check it out!
An example – Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics
Links from @BristolGamesHub Talk
I did a talk at Bristol Games Hub about crowdfunding. Its on my mind as we’ve got an ongoing campaign…
From which I talked about a few things which have links, which are here…
- How the Zano crashed a burned
- My collection of crowdfunding links and info
- ICO Partners article about 2017
- FIG has some great projects
- More links from my 2016 crowdfunding talk
Oh and some tweets I referenced; don’t think if a campaign raises a lot of money, that is a magic money tree; campaigns have a lot of costs and development costs too!
The window for launching crowdfunding campaigns…
Thanks!
#CthulhuThursday – Beware the Ides of Cthulhu
Hello fellow travelers into the dark… A bundle of links to send you down the evil rabbit hole…
First off, of course, I must report on the progress of Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics – and it is good news!
I’ve also written a huuuge article on how Cthulhu is going mainstream…
Lovecraft himself would never know the success and cultural impact this or any of his other works would have. When he died in 1937 he would only know that his works had reached a limited audience, never having made enough from his works to make a living as a writer.
Yet over 90 years since he set out the plot of The Call of Cthulhu, the idea, themes, and the eponymous creature has finally reached the mainstream. The majority of us have heard of “The Call of Cthulhu” in one form or another.
While you enjoy that article, how’s about some food?
Or perhaps you’d prefer a poem?
See you next time!
(Cthulhu Thursday is a dose of Mythos to brighten darken your week. More on the idea can be found here and a list of posts thus far, here. Also some upcoming Cthulhu news, sign up to the Auroch Digital’s newsletter. Enjoy!)
Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics – Summoning Shoggoths
I thought you might be interested in how we’re going all Shoggoth-y in Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics?
We also thought it might be of interest to share something created (summoned?) a few months ago. The setting for Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics is earlier in the timeline of the Forest of Fear campaign. We’ll be revealing more about that soon. What we wanted though was – of course – Shoggoths. These protoplasmic tendriled creatures are being used by the Nazis much as the Elder Things also once did; a disposable slave labour. At least that’s the plan. So how might a Shoggoths work in-game? We started off early on building Shoggoth-Tech to allow us to represent them on a grid-based game but also to keep the more protoplasmic and unformed nature of them. So we needed tech that summon and reform their bodies within the grid as they move down narrow spaces, expand into a wider room, extend to attack or lose sections of body from combat damage. Anyhow here’s one of the test video we created while exploring the concept…
Plus we’ve unlocked some new starter pledge levels! (Which are a BARGAIN!)
Introductory One Player Starter Set for a pledge of £75 (Around $104/€84 – But worth an amazing £127!)
This gives you – A Digital PC copy the game, PLUS A starter set for the Achtung! Cthulhu Skirmish game: The Skirmish Commanders Box set which includes the printed rulebook, card deck, dice, counters and templates, A set of 3 Section M Investigators (Badger Harris, Akhee Singh and Arianne Dubois) and 10 Badgers Commandos OR 3 Black Sun Villains (A sorcerous Black Sun Canon, Master and a Die Tote elite guard) and 10 Black Sun Troopers PLUS All the unlocked PDFs and your name in the credits.Introductory Two Player Skirmish Set t for a pledge of £140 (Around $193/€157 – But worth an amazing £173!)
A Digital PC copy the game, PLUS A starter set for the Achtung! Cthulhu Skirmish game: A Digital PC copy the game, PLUS A starter set for the Achtung! Cthulhu Skirmish game: The Skirmish Commanders Box set which includes the printed rulebook, card deck, dice, counters and templates PLUS Rise of the Black Sun Campaign Book PLUS 3 Section M Investigators (Badger Harris, Akhee Singh and Arianne Dubois), 10 Badger’s Commandos, 3 Black Sun Villains (A sorcerous Black Sun Canon, Master and a Die Tote elite guard), 10 Servitor of Nyarlathotep Horde Miniatures PLUS All the unlocked PDFs PLUS the Achtung! Cthulhu PDF Collection (see Ally Pledge) and your name in the credits.
