Dev Diary #1 - Untamed Tactics sees the light
Hey everyone!
Welcome to the Untamed Tactics dev diary, where we write down stuff about Untamed Tactics and hope you’re interested enough to actually read it!
“So wait, why should I listen to you in the first place,” I hear you thinking. I don’t really have a good answer to that, but I can at least tell you who’s rambling you’ll be reading here mostly.
My name is Milan, Game Director of Grumpy Owl Games. In a small team like ours (5 fulltimers) this title means little more than ‘person who try make game work gud’, which is why I’ll be the one telling you about what we have done, are doing and will be doing in the coming months!
What we’ve been working on
The main goal for the past few weeks of development was to get the game systems to a point where we could start approaching publishers again. Our initial attempt at approaching publishers was met with a near-universal “looks cool get back to us when it’s more polished”. Turned out, the early work-in-progress version wasn’t what publishers wanted to throw money at immediately!
The biggest problems that were making it look unpolished were the placeholder user interface, which was still a cobbled-together remnant of our early visual prototype, as well as the clunky feeling visual effects and animations in the battle scene.
UI
The overhaul of the User Interface is complete and is much more in line with, well.. itself. Everything looks decidedly less 'prototype-y'! Moreover, other parts of the UI that weren't up to scratch or lacking were also addressed, such as Gem powers showing on the Abilities in combat.
Music
The first songs made especially for Untamed Tactics are now in the game! Oceanic (yup, we have a fancy DJ/producer to help us) has been experimenting with the feel of the game, so we have a nice mix of modern electronic and classical music in for the publisher demo!
Camp
The new (WIP) visuals for the Camp scene have been implemented! Feast your eyes on the ramshackle huts, as well as a taste of the third region: The Shattered Coast (working title).
We've also managed to squeeze in some improvements to Vendors, including adding dialogue. General dialogue has been improved as well, with the often requested speeding up of dialogue text (thanks for not wanting to read my stuff y'all).
Battle
We've done a bunch of small improvements on both sound and visual effects to improve the impact of abilities and taking damage, pushing/pulling and general timing.
Balance
Many abilities were re-balanced, as well as overall health values for all characters. Apex Rak'han, the first boss, has been toned down a bit due to his predisposition to destroy publisher reviewers. Reaction abilities for the player characters have been improved in usefulness.
New feature: Leveling system
A new leveling system has been implemented, with specific characters having different growth rates and thus chance to level up certain attributes.
Up next
We're working hard on getting the rogue-lite game mode ready for testing (remember that you can become a tester by joining our Discord at Discord link). The full implementation requires a lot of things to be re-made (such as the quest system and our map creation tool), so it will be a few weeks before this is ready to be played! So far, the core structure is nearly done, as well as character selection.
See you next time!
~ Milan