Hello, tactics fans! Since our last update, I've been working hard on the new engine. As of this past week, all of the game's basic systems are now complete! Engine improvements include:

• new procedural animations help everything feel more vibrant and alive. Characters breathe while standing idle; foliage now sways in the breeze; water and lava visibly slosh to and fro.
• the rendering pipeline underlying it all has been upgraded to something more modern, with bloom lighting and full-screen anti-aliasing. Thanks to the bloom lighting, lava, sparks, fire, and other combat visual effects now visibly glow, and post-process color grading now makes everything pop more. There are glow effects in certain character portraits, too! There's a new trailer up on the Together in Battle page where you can see this all in action. :)
• speaking of character portraits: I've hired the incredible painter Georgi Minkov to redo them all in a beautiful painterly style while retaining all the new, alternate facial expressions. Trust me, you're gonna love it. He's starting with the proc gen portraits, then moving on to the "generic unit" portraits, and then we're tackling the portraits for unique handmade characters.
• the UI is prettier now, too: I had Franklin Chan (whom you might remember from True Messiah) paint some lovely new windows and cursors. I also added in more animated elements: new turn and combat victory/defeat screens now feature banners that sway to and fro in the breeze.
• more combat interface improvements! Most notably, left-clicking an enemy now shows the spaces it can reach with its attacks in addition to its move range:
• further AI improvements! The game now supports differing AI profiles with different ways of prioritizing moves, and these can be assigned on an army-by-army basis. Enemies will now take opportunities to shove your characters off of cliffs.
• better proc gen battles! Gone is the old method of slapping together premade chunks into a level. Instead, the game now crafts levels from scratch algorithmically based on customizable parameters.
• better campaign editor tools. The proc gen battle generation I mentioned? Yeah, it's in the map editor too! If you want some help fleshing out your campaign, you can let the map editor think up a level for you and then take it from there with your own edits and additions!
• the game now supports custom voice-over dialogue. Wanna try voice-acting Emma--or an original character for your own campaign? It's supported!
• cut scenes have a lot more polish as well, with changing facial expressions and proper walk bobbing and sound effects during portrait movement.
• the game is now up to 153 skills! (To put this in perspective, I think Telepath Tactics originally shipped with a little over 110?) New skills include the new trap Caltrops, the area control skill Hold, the movement ability Juxtapose, and the first-strike ability Preemptive Stance.
• new visual effects and sound effects for advanced skills!
• you can now smash enemies into each other! (It's super fun.) This is shown on the Together in Battle page too. :)
• bug fixes. My god, the BUG FIXES. I'm not playing around this time. Every bug must. Be. Squashed.

But wait, there's more! I haven't just been working on the engine: I've also been getting Telepath Tactics' cut scenes and battles working in the engine, one by one. I'm currently up to the "defend the camp" battle, which you can see me working on here in the game's spiffy new map editor:

I am shooting to have the remade version out no later than early 2022, but it's entirely possible I'll have it done earlier. I'll keep you posted!

Yours in tactics,

Craig