These last two weeks have been among the most intense during the whole development of MENACE, with the Tactical Combat Demo release.
Let’s spend a moment to recap the past week!
By the Numbers
So far over 100,000 players downloaded the MENACE demo, sent in over 1,300 feedback and bug reports, and left over 600 reviews that amount to a Very Positive rating.
Feedback and Discussions
The feedback and response to the Demo is almost overwhelming, with our Discord and the forums being active day and night. We try our best to be present, reply, and engage with the community, but we also have to collect, filter, sort, and work through bug reports and feedback, which takes quite a while. On top of that, the game's normal development has to keep going at the same pace. We can highly recommend joining our Discord server to directly chat with us, leave feedback, and get in touch with other community members. Check it out here. We also have a thriving community on Reddit as well, r/MENACE.
Patches
We already patched the game five times in the past two weeks, addressing some of the most urgent and prominent issues, mainly focusing on bugs that stop the game from progressing. We also started to add some balancing changes, for example, reduced the armor and hitpoints of the dreaded pirate flame truck. You can read up on the changelogs here:
Biggest Topics
Bugs
The game has been running surprisingly well for many players, and total game crashes are rarer than we expected. Still, with a massive influx of testers, lots of edge cases and rare issues pop up. Our priority is now on fixing the most severe issues as quickly as possible.
Lines of Sight
The LoS system in the game is intentionally very simplistic and abstract. This clashes with the high fidelity of the models and graphics that make it look a lot more complex than the underlying engine actually is. This creates a mismatch between how LoS works and how players expect it to work. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for this, but we have making the LoS more intuitive and match expectations better high on our list!
Balancing
Many players had a hard time with the defense missions in the game. While they are still hard, and supposed to be, we increased the time to capture and also made pinned units not captured in one of this week's patches.
Lack of Information
Many players noted a lack of info, especially in enemy tooltips. This can make it hard to play the game effectively when you don't know what weapons an enemy unit carries, for example. We do have a tooltip rework and expansion in the works to give players the info they need to be more effective on the battlefield. This also extends beyond the enemy tooltips and will be addressed by us.
UI/UX
With a game as complex as MENACE, with its different systems and interconnected mechanics, creating an easy-to-use, informative UI that looks good and doesn't overwhelm players with size and numbers is very hard. We did collect lots of valuable feedback this week about how to improve it, and we will start working through it.
Next Fest Update – New Operation!
With Next Fest starting on Monday, we are also updating the game with an entirely new Pirate “Thwart Invasion” Operation with 10 all-new missions and loads of new equipment to experiment with, from light walkers and autocannons to disposable AT launchers. This should give you a fresh taste of MENACE and provide even more amazing feedback to help shape development.
We know that MENACE challenges the established rules of many turn-based tactics games, which is bound to create a sometimes painful learning experience.
We want to thank all players who still gave it a chance and took the time and effort to get into the game's unique way of depicting modern firearms-based combat. We are doing our best to communicate the game's design better and make it easier to get into it. It will be worthwhile to come back regularly and check for improvements!
Engage, Explore, and Stay Informed
You can find us on Discord, BlueSky, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit for discussions, updates, and feedback. You can also subscribe to our monthly MENACE newsletter on our website — just scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.