I've been pretty quiet lately, so I just meant to be sort of a notification so that if anyone still follows this game, they can know what's going on and whether the game is dead or not.
SO bug fixes are always a priority, they've seemed to lessen recently so I haven't been doing as many bug fixes now but a few still pop up here and there so if you find any, lemme know and I'll still be working to fix those bugs.
In terms of further development, I've taken a look at the game as a whole, and I found that the whole campaign mission thing was not as fun as I wanted it to be, and often got in the way of just simply doing the mission stuff.
I thought about maybe improving it, but because my resources are limited and things take a long time for be to develop, it might not be the best use of my time to essentially try to make a better grand strategy game within a game that's clearly focused on tactical shenanigans.
I might still go back and rework the campaign stuff later down the line, but right now, this is the description of what I'm currently working on.
CURRENT DEVELOPMENT GOAL
The new game mode will be a Rogue-like gamemode, where you import up to 12 characters with permadeath and stripped of the campaign elements. Instead of a campaign map, you'll simply do missions and gain score at try to get as far as you can.
The idea is to incorporate some of that custom character/team management stuff into a quicker and more "active" gameplay loop, where you just do the missions themselves instead of all the fluff around it.
Things aren't quite set in stone and the details are subject to change, but essentially, it will act as sort of a NG+ where you can play thru a game with ur characters from the campaign and just do mission after mission to see how far you can get. I'll also probably add more missions on top of reusing the ones currently in the game.
MODE DETAILS
Permadeath and Rogue-Like Elements
As mentioned before, there will be permadeath, no new characters, and also no healing. For healing, you'll have to spend lots of money to buy one time use healing, and the idea will be that it'll be harder and harder to keep everyone at max HP. The goal would be to get as high of a score as possible in a run until u either "retire" or lose everyone. You'll probably be able to export these characters at the end again if you wanna try another run.
Streamlined Management
There won't be any training management gameplay, where you upgrade lanes and train soldiers over time. You'll still be able to level up, but you'll just use points to instantly upgrade stats.
I'll also probably remove the research aspect, and you'll simply have everything unlocked, though you'd still purchase it. Idea is to streamline the management->combat aspect of the game, and balancing it thru high maintenance costs from deaths, injuries, equipment, etc.
Possible Stealth Emphasis
This game was originally supposed to be a stealth game, but it kinda fell apart because everyone had machine guns and assault rifles (why sneak when you can blap).
However, I have an idea of adding more stealthy mission types, where it'll either have trigger happy hostage takers, or making certain missions be "solo" missions, with enemy reinforcements on alert (to increase danger of going loud, make stealth more appealing). Lots of interesting possibilities there.
As mentioned before, none of this is set in stone and if you have any suggestions or ideas regarding this game mode, feel free to pop in and lemme know. I don't know if I'd be able to incorporate any super crazy cool ideas, but I've received some pretty good ideas in the past from you guys so it's always helpful to receive feedback and suggestions. Some ideas I've received I haven't mentioned on here but are definitely floating around in my head, trying to see how it can be incorporated into this new mode.
Thanks for playing my game, and I hope you'll enjoy the new mode when it comes out
P.S. If anyone has any cool screenshots, I would appreciate if you could send them to me. I've been using the same pictures for all the announcements/cover images