Bright and early on this lovely Thursday morning, we are proud to announce that March of War: Face Off has officially left Early Access. Make no mistake, though: we have a busy schedule in mind to continue development of this game. What leaving Early Access means for us is reaching a wider audience, embracing the features our game already has, and nothing but forward steps.
So what can you expect in the coming months, now that we’ve finally ripped the shiny ‘Early Access’ sticker off the game?
Let’s start at the top and with honest communication: We really wanted to launch with a new faction. Technical limitations meant that wasn’t going to be possible, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not coming. Our target release date is going to be early-to-mid August. The next faction will be The Shogun Empire. Veterans of the March of War franchise will likely recognize Empire as one of the more unique factions in the original game, with several fire units, heavy melee attacks, and archers that shoot dynamite… because physics.
The main design philosophy behind Empire in the original March of War was ‘cheap units that work best in big clusters.’ This was most prominently emphasized in the bonuses for Shredder and Manchurian units. That general spirit has been maintained in Face Off: cards for Empire have a lot of ‘auto advance’ abilities, moving forward automatically, and there are also several that buff on ally injury or death. Unique to Empire, there’s also some that can damage allies to perform other actions. We think this faction will be a very different gameplay style than the two in game, and we’re looking forward to you all getting to see them in action as well.
Here’s a couple screenshots of two of our units. People who have played the original March of War might recognize them.
http://i.imgur.com/V4RuwXp.png
http://i.imgur.com/GK7IKSV.png
Some other features we’re discussing, but are still working out the kinks on, include:
- Arena Mode
- Gameboards
- Tournaments
- Story Campaign
I can’t give you a rough date on these, beyond that Arena is near the top of our short list, right up there with Empire for features to be added. You’ll be seeing new cards coming out more regularly now, too, and with each release, we’ll give you an announcement explaining the new cards added that you can start looking forward to.
Onward to the changelog for this launch. Not much has changed, because we’ve been doing a lot of hotfixes lately, to try and prepare for this launch. But in this build…
Build #: 4.673
- Added new pack options: Faction Packs. These packs are gem-only purchases and will contain only cards from their respective faction, with the same rarity options as the default pack. There are no cards in these packs that are not in the default pack; this just limits whether it’s Alliance or Republic cards ONLY that you get.
- Distributed Early Access reward for players: 500 tickets. This is enough tickets to craft one gold card or five silvers, depending on player preference.
- Updated the images in Steam for our game to reflect the many new UI changes.
- Corrected a problem with discarding daily quests and new ones not being available.
- Added Force Coordinator and Parachute Brigade to the 1:1 disintegration for a few days to reflect recent balance changes.