pocketwatchgames

[pocketwatchgames]

Open Positions

We are not currently hiring, but if you think you might have something to offer, please send an email to jobs@pocketwatchgames.com.

[pocketwatchgames]

Monaco 2: Now in Development

Psst. Keep this quiet...

smashes wall and sets off all the alarms

WE’RE MAKING MONACO 2!

Wishlist on Steam

Discord

Twitch

Watch our first dev log (including music from Austin Wintory):

For the past year we've been working with Humble Games on the next evolution of our co-op crime caper, and while we're still very early, we're ready to tell you all about it. Come watch us on Twitch, say hi on Discord, or comment on our Youtube Devlog to join in with our open development!

[pocketwatchgames]

Old-school fan Scott Redig becomes Pocketwatch’s newest Engineer

Scott first heard of Pocketwatch back in 2010, when a video of Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine was posted on Bytejacker. Monaco had just been nominated for the Independent Games Festival. He quickly became a part of the game's nascent community, contributing to our open development in a variety of ways. A few years later, he even visited us at the Game Developer Conference.

After graduating from college, Scott went to Google, and now, I'm proud to say, he has found a home here at Pocketwatch.

Scott, has a particularly nimble mind and a deep knowledge of modern game design. I couldn't be more proud to bring this OG fan -- this old friend -- on board the growing Pocketwatch team.

[pocketwatchgames]

Pocketwatch’s New Art Director - Lee Dotson

Please welcome Lee Dotson as Pocketwatch’s new art director!

Lee has had a long career in games, going back to his work at Ion Storm, Blizzard, Epic Games, and most recently Harebrained Schemes. He’s fluent in pretty much all disciplines and has a strong technical background as well.

The thing that we’re most excited about with Lee is his unique personal vision. Though we’ve had the good fortune to work with many talented artists over the years, this will be the first time Pocketwatch has been able to have an in-house art director guiding our project’s aesthetic vision from such an early stage. Lee’s personal work is both dark and whimsical, highly technical yet wildly imaginative, and his professional work has the range of a true journeyman.

Lee’s arrival marks the start of a new chapter for Pocketwatch, and we can’t wait to explore the worlds which will spring forth from his mind.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeexDot

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leedotart/?hl=en

Website: http://www.magentasunday.com/

Examples of Lee's personal work follow:

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.8.1.0: Slow or Sudden Death

During the last few months, Sergeant Volkov and the Matriarch demonstrated their full potential when working as a team: Wolf & Owl have been proven to be an incredibly strong combination, because doubling the spawn rate of an Owl did not only mean twice the damage, but also twice the meat shield. Once they hit the field, fighting the almost endless stream of Mice quickly became a disheartening endeavor for the opponent. Preventing the duo, however, was not easy, either: especially Lizards, Snakes, Skunks and Machine Guns served as powerful tools to safely get to the late game.

That is why this balance patch introduces several changes, not only to the interaction of Wolf and Owl, but also generally trying to empower aggressive playstyles in the early and mid game.

It also contains some modifications behind the scenes that should improve ranked matchmaking and prevent some desyncs.

Multiplayer Balance

Changes in a Nutshell

Expansions start with 1/3 of their full health and slowly increase their max. hitpoints in the first 200s after construction. Wolf buff lasts longer on cheap units, but shorter on anything expensive. A buffed Owl will no longer spawn Mice twice as fast, but only 50% faster. Skunk gas deals less damage, but can be fired at longer range. Snake poison kills more slowly, but lasts longer. Health automatically regenerates anywhere on the map (not only in friendly territory). Toad, Falcon, Ferret, and Barbed Wire get a small buff. Lizard and Machine Gun get a small nerf. Neutral Cabins deal less damage. Commander burrows faster.

Details on Big Changes

Gristmill: Expansions will start with 50 HP and gain +10 HP every 20s, until they reached 150 HP (starting Mills remain unchanged, with 150 HP from the beginning). Mill HP is displayed during construction, when the Mill is damaged, or briefly after it gained +10 HP.

Wolf: Buff duration depends on the target's cost, i.e. 4s on t3 units/warrens and Drumfire Cannons (180 Food), 6s on Balloons and t2 warren (120 Food), 12s on t2 units, t1 warrens, Pigs and Machine Guns, 36s on t1 units. As a rule of thumb, one Wolf can keep 360 Food continuously buffed. (Previously it could buff up to six units/structures of any kind, and was thus much more efficient combined with t3 than with t1.)

Skunk: Has 6 range (from 4), deals 2 DPS (from 3).

Snake: Has 32 HP (from 28), can no longer attack structures. Each tag of poison lasts 20s, deals 1 DPS per tag, no longer slows down affected units, and prevents natural healing (previously 2 DPS, got cured only when natural healing kicked in). Healing in water or from Pigeons still works, but does not cure the poison.

Natural Healing: Starts after 10s of not getting hit regardless of territory (5s for cold bloods, at the same rate), and only if the unit is not poisoned. Previously, natural healing only worked in friendly territory, after 5s, cured poison, and was 3x as strong for cold bloods (Lizards, Toads, Chameleons, Snakes).

Smaller Changes

Lizard: 7 HP (from 8).

Toad: 8 HP (from 9), flat 3 damage in a 3x3 area (from 4 single target damage + 2 aoe); 4x "crit" factor on aoe damage against structures remains.

Falcon: Shoots 16 bullets in one burst (from 12), then reloads for 2.4s (from 1.8s); damage per bullet, DPS etc. remain the same.

Ferret: 7 DPS (from 6 DPS), i.e. one shot in 2s, dealing 14 damage.

Owl: Spawns 4 Mice at 2s intervals, then pauses for 8s. Wolf buff will only reduce the spawn interval from 2s to 1s, not the 8s pause. (Previously 3 Mice at 1s intervals with 7s pause; Wolf buff doubled the speed.)

Mouse: Cannot be healed, stimmed or targeted by focus fire, and cannot attack Barbed Wire, anymore. Life time to 36s from 30s.

Barbed Wire: 8 HP (from 7), vision to 2 tiles (from 4), sell timer removed.

Land Mine: Vision to 2 tiles (from 4; also fixed a bug that could result in a desync when Mines were sold).

Machine Gun: 5 DPS (from 6).

Cabin: 50 HP (from 32) and 1 DPS (from 3).

Flying: All flying units/structures have +4 vision (from +2); only Balloon vision range has been reduced by 2, so it remains unchanged.

Cloaked: Cloaked units/structures do not emit visible particles.

Commander: Burrows in 1s (from 1.5s).

Community News

In November, the Tooth and Tail Championship 2021.2 culminated in a very close match between the Premier league finalists, mad Dr. Mishi and Tatanka, the master of Wolf-Owl. I really recommend you watch them (YouTube)! Congrats to both of them, as well as to the other finalists: Queen Sasha (Premier Division), Meek, xnor, and Big Pimpintosh (Intermediate Division)!

Meanwhile the "Fall Open" of Gent's 21 Duels only waited for the Championship to end, and started right afterwards - a series of boss battles with special rules. See the stages and challengers... ... and find the links to (re-)watch the casted episodes on the 21 Duels Website!

Enjoy! EELuminatus

[pocketwatchgames]

Why Not Unity?

A question we often get during streaming is “Why not Unity, or Unreal? Why did you build your own engine?”. Having been on a couple large projects that have used Unity I can say with some authority that the answer to that is complicated. Unity is obviously working for many people and definitely gets you into the meat of development and can save you time. The projects I was involved in that used Unity would never have existed without Unity, the team just didn’t have the skill set required to pull that off. So just because we aren’t using Unity doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. If you don’t have the skills on your team to write your own engine, then you really don’t have a choice. If you do have the skills then you are aware of the trade-offs you’re making.

Building an engine to support a small game with a small team isn’t as much work as some people would have you believe. If you’ve never built a game engine before that might seem daunting. I’ve been building them from scratch for 20 years.

We aren’t using Unity or Unreal because I believe we can build a better game on our own engine, and leverage it across future projects (and it really is about the end product).

Our game engine is an expert system that requires a relatively high level of technical skill to use effectively. People have to learn to use it which means we can’t just expect someone to hit the ground running because it’s Unity.

However, the learning curve for our engine is a fraction of what it is for learning Unity or Unreal.

We have to port the engine to each platform ourselves, but I’ve been doing that for a long time too. It does require effort but once the port is established it is minimal effort for maintenance. A lot of platforms share a significant amount of common code, like POSIX APIs etc. The biggest difference between them is typically graphics API and this is where most of the effort goes.

We take advantage of high quality C++ libraries readily available like Dear ImGui, SDL, FMOD and others.

It is significantly faster to iterate in our engine than in Unity or Unreal because we designed it to be that way. We can hot-reload assets and code on-the-fly. It compiles from scratch quickly. This has a direct impact on productivity and quality. The more iteration, the better the product. This is a primary benefit of building custom tools for your game.

Optimized builds of the game load levels in under a second and runs at 500 fps without having spent any time on performance yet.

We don’t fight or worry about garbage collection hitches because we aren’t using a managed language.

No AOT crap on consoles.

We don’t spend time trying to get something to work in Unity or Unreal because of minutiae, things are direct and simple.

We can code down to the metal on consoles and other platforms.

We aren’t on the Unity/Unreal engine upgrade treadmill where everyone has to stop for a couple days while we upgrade and cross our fingers that nothing is seriously broken by the upgrade.

We don’t spend time dealing with 2 or 3 competing systems that do almost the same thing in different ways, and the only one that isn’t deprecated isn’t feature complete yet.

If you step outside of what Unity is designed for you lose a lot of its benefits.

Inevitably the version of Unity you are using will be outdated. The Asset Store middleware you are using will be out of date. Eventually your project will be lost to time, unable to be resurrected.

Like anything that becomes endemic to an industry, people get used to the costs of Unity and are often not even aware that they are making a trade-off. Our development is unhindered by a lot of crap that you have to deal with when you use Unity. We really do spend the vast majority of our time just enjoying the hell out of the development process. In my personal experience on projects that have used Unity it is often stressful and frustrating due to bugs and lack of agency over things that leads to a lot less joy in the process.

Building a game on your own engine affects more than just the programming though, it affects the entire process. If your team has never shipped a game on a custom engine then they may not be able to adapt. Using Unity and Unreal affects how you think about game development and if you’ve never built a game “on the metal” you have to relearn how to solve problems. Using your own engine means the solution space you have in which to solve your problems is effectively unlimited and you can solve them in simple and direct ways. The solution to “how do I make this work in Unity?” is often not direct, but instead takes a meandering, messy, and suboptimal approach because you can’t make structural changes to the engine to support it. *cough* modding *cough*.

One of the most valuable things that Casey Muratori (formerly of RAD Games and author and host of Handmade Hero) teaches, if you listen closely, is simplicity. People who are used to using giant frameworks and other systems don’t realize the enormous complexity and cost inherent in those systems. They mistakenly assume that the problems they have to deal with in those frameworks are inherent in any system. Problems like performance and memory management just aren’t even things you have to really worry about if you just do it the right way to begin with. And it’s usually simpler too, and easier to modify later.

You don’t need fancy generalized tools to build a game. I don’t mean tools like photoshop or Maya or other readily available commodity software. I’m talking about the tools you inevitably need on any game to build the actual game, the part where you are putting it all together. Maybe you need a map editor, or a way to make a library of spells and their effects. The tools you need depend on what you need to build, and every game needs something. Even if you are using Unity sometimes you still have to build these one-off custom tools, but inevitably everything ends up being a question of “How do I get this data into Unity”.

A lot of people underestimate the raw power of expert systems and overestimate the value of general purpose tools, especially as it applies to a focused, and highly skilled team. Text is often still one of the most powerful ways of expressing data, it is easily refactored, searched, and diff’ed. Unity ScriptableObject and Unreal Blueprints are enormously complicated systems that you don’t need to solve in your game engine.

Effort is inevitably spent bending the general purpose tool into the specialized tool you need, and as is almost always the case, the general purpose tool does its job in a general purpose way that is not optimized for any particular use. Sometimes it’s more work too.

Hopefully this has given you some insight into how I think about the tradeoffs. If you have never built a game from scratch you should because you will learn a ton and it will at least give you insight into how to best use Unity or Unreal.

Joseph Riedel

CTO, Pocketwatch Games

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.8: Season 6 & Precision Engineering

Patch 1.8: Season 6 & Precision Engineering

A new season starting with clean ranked leaderboards, a couple quality of life features and fixes regarding multiplayer games, and a few balance adjustments come with this patch. You'll also find some news about past/current/upcoming community events at the end of this announcement.

Ladder Reset

We have seen lots of familiar names in Season 5, but also some new players making it to the top of the ladder (in no particular order): NightSlayer, Kipo, Imari, Tatanka, Ploob, QQ, Trumpet, Melvinfro, Snake, The Gentleman, Arilou, mocaccino, Satoros, Tiki Gray, Pile, Big Pimpintosh, R22, Epicosity, James, and Meek have all made it past 1,000 points (hope I didn't miss anyone, you've been rushing past me way too fast).

Now we all go back to a fresh start. Have fun climbing the ladder, again, in Season 6, beginning now! (Or simply take a few steps and have a good time anywhere on that ladder.)

Balance Changes

These adjustments are mostly minor tweaks (Mole buff, Toad nerf, better counters against Barbed Wire), and a slightly bigger change to Mines, which are now faster to build, slower to sell, easier to reveal, and less efficient against units of higher tiers: That should shift their use towards offensive play, covering your retreat or protecting your siege and poke attacks.

Commander: Reveals cloaked enemies after standing still for 1.6s (from 2s)

Toad: 9 HP (from 8 HP), 1x speed (from 1.3x), 2 single target damage (from 4)

Mole: warren has 24 HP (from 18) and loses 2 HP (from 3) per Mole spawn; effectively increasing the durability of Mole warrens, and reducing the loss per Mole from 10 to 5 Food

Barbed Wire: 7 HP (from 14 HP), takes only 50% damage when touched; effectively making Wire more fragile against melee/aoe attacks and during construction

Mine: 5s build time (from 10s), 2s sell time during which the Mine is revealed/can be attacked; 8 single target damage (from 14), revealing that unit if it is cloaked/can cloak

Improvements and Fixes

Ranked matchmaking goes faster to full search range (14/14, which means any rank in any region) and restarts automatically every 2 minutes (with full search range) to prevent your lobby and search from timing out. (There has been a bug that prevented you from finding a match after searching for too long without restarting the search - should be better now!)

Hourly leaderboards don't get wiped completely when the next hour starts, only entries older than one hour disappear. (Thanks to pyro for significant help on this!) Also, the style of the "Me" filter changed, showing other players' rank in relation to yours.

Some players reported crashes in local FFA games due to a divide by zero error. I cannot reproduce that issue, but I changed something that will hopefully prevent this bug from occuring. (In case you've had that issue: please tell me whether it actually got better with this patch!)

Sometimes players started without a full deck in multiplayer games. This should no longer happen. It was a rare and irregular bug, though, so I cannot verify this is fixed 100% - please tell me if it still occurs!

Multiplayer on Mac has not been possible for a while due to some changes on the infrastructure TnT multiplayer is running on. but it's finally fixed!

PS4 crossplay is temporarily disabled while we figure out some issues on that platform.

Community Events

Running

The "Summer Open Lunch" of the (20)21 Duels just started. It's a competitive play-at-your-own-pace series of games against "bosses", each with their own special rules. See all details here ​ The TnT Dual Championship's grand finals will be streamed live, soon. This series of 2v2 matches has been interrupted due to the Mac multiplayer issue mentioned above, but now we are looking forward to see Premish vs MeekSlayer and Heartaru vs Satball in the semi-finals of the upper division, as well as SzenPaw (already qualified for finals) vs GEG (semi-), Gortoros or The Tatankas (quarter-finals) in the lower division - guess yourself who's in there or watch the finals to find out! ​ Tandordraco is now doing a show called TnTTalks on Twitch every other week, discussing various topics like tournaments, balance and meta with changing guests, showing highligths of recent games etc. - You can find it on Twitch or YouTube! ​ Kipo recently started a King of the Hill format: Players can claim a hill by winning a best of 5 match against a King of the Hill. There are four hills for different skill levels, and you can jump in or drop out at any time - just contact Kipo on the Pocketwatch Discord! ​

Past

The first season of the 2021 TnT Championship ended in March, with these medal-grabbers: Meek (1st), Melvinfro (2nd), and The Gentleman (3rd) in Premier Division; Tatanka (1st), Kerpa (2nd), and Epicosity (3rd) in Intermediate Division; Leon (1st), Tandordraco (2nd), and Cavernus (3rd) in Beginner Division. Congrats to you, and thanks to everyone taking part in the Championship, as player, organizer, caster or viewer on Twitch! ​ The idea of TnT Clan Wars may have started as a joke, but eventually they also became a cool new tournament ending earlier this year, with Lizard Wizard Magic beating the Toad Road Gang for first place, and the Badger Missionaries in third place. Congrats and thanks to everyone involved! ​ Enjoy and have a great feast! EELuminatus

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.7.1: Vyeshal Ventures

This patch comes with three new languages (Ukrainian, Esperanto, and Dutch) as well as a couple of balance tweaks to make certain playstyles a bit more risky. Most importantly: Barbed Wire no longer heals and Mole Warrens even deteriorate, so they keep most of their strength, but you better make it count! See all the details about this and some other, small improvements below.

Multiplayer Balance

Pig: 18 HP (from 20 HP).

Toad: moves at the speed of regular units on roads (x1.3), on all terrain types.

Mole: Warren to 18 HP (from 25 HP), and the Warren loses 3 HP whenever a Mole spawns from it.

Chameleon: can attack immediately after uncloaking (from 0.25s delay).

Barbed Wire: 14 HP (from 16 HP), start building with 1 HP (from 2.5 HP).

Barbed Wire, Landmine, and Mole Warren: never regenerate HP.

All Structures: cure poison on themselves even outside territory (poison used to get cured only in territory).

Stealth Reveal: Commander needs to stand still for 2s (from 1.2s). Changed visualization and audio. Enemy commanders will not see the highlighted tiles or hear the sound effect.

Other Improvements and Fixes

Shared replays now also work if they have been played on Workshop Maps.

Mice no longer regenerate HP while being attacked (which was particularly bad in Story Mode missions where water heals, e.g. Sage Marro Speaks).

Increased the impact of the difficulty slider for Awash in Solawa (Food gain per kill now depends on difficulty) and Vacancee Downfall (enemy has more/less resources depending on difficulty).

Fixed the localization of summoned unit names in Story Mode.

Localization

The game can now also be played in Ukrainian, Esperanto, and Dutch! Many thanks to Anastasiia Vestel, Daria Titarova, Dina Dusha, Faina Zholobak, Lesia Ivashkevych, Maksym Zholobak, Roman Hardashuk, Tetiana Nepypenko, Viktoriia Farenyk, Vladyslava Niroda, Yaroslav Strigun (Ukrainian), and Vincent "Babelismoj" Oostelbos (Esperanto and Dutch).

Community News

End of July, the Tooth and Tail Championship 2020.2 started with almost 60 players. It ended in September with these winners: Premier division: Arilou (1st), The Gentleman (2nd), mocaccino (3rd) Intermediate division: Sulomon (1st), Trumpet (2nd), Satoros (3rd) Beginner division: elverdulerojorge (1st), Kin_Replica (2nd), Horus The Holy (3rd)

Shortly after that, The Magnificent 21 started: a team-based tournament with a lot of flavor, deck restrictions, and advantages for less experienced players. See The Magnificent Gazette for weekly reports on the tournament! In the end, the Badger Brothers barely defeated the Kasha Agency in the Grand Finals!

Mocaccino, the main organizer of the Championship, recently started a Pre-Season Cup, and more events are planned, e.g. another Boss Rush tournament (like 21 Duels), more seasons and spinoffs of the Championship as well as another 2v2 tournament early next year. Jump into the Discord server to stay updated about these events!

Enjoy! EELuminatus

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.7 : Qui va là? (+Season 5)

French localization, the ability to reveal cloaked enemies, and a ladder reset - these are the headliners of this patch. We also threw some small balance tweaks in the mix, mainly to make poking and siege strategies stronger, and added a few minor fixes and features.

Season 5

All ranked points have been reset to zero, again, season 5 has started! Eight players managed to get beyond 1000 points, this season: Congrats to Arilou, Gent, James, Imari, QQ, Melvinfro, Jakobi, and mocaccino!

Multiplayer Balance/Gameplay Changes

Commander: After standing still for a short time, any other team's cloaked units and structures in a 3x3 area around the commander will be forced to uncloak for 1s. (Rallying allowed, burrowing resets the timer.) Visualization as seen in the GIF is off by default, but can be turned on in options (other).

Toad: Moves at the same speed on all kinds of terrain; still slowed down by Barbed Wire, Daze etc.

Pigeon: 4 tiles range (from 3).

Ferret: 6 DPS (from 5 DPS), 6 tiles vision range (from 5 tiles).

Chameleon: 32 HP (from 34 HP).

Badger: Rev up in 5s (from 6s) and rev down in 3s (from 2s).

Wolf: Buffs units for 10s (from 12s).

**Fox:* 12 DPS (from 11 DPS), 25 HP (from 24 HP), 6 tiles vision range (from 5 tiles).

Barbed Wire: 16 HP (from 18 HP).

Landmine: Gets triggered at 1 tile distance, again (from 0 tiles = same tile), 16 damage against a single target (from 18), including 2 damage in a 3x3 area (unchanged).

Machinegun: 28 HP (from 24 HP).

Artillery: 6 tiles vision range (from 5 tiles).

Lower max. amount of water on Old Mother Township maps.

Localization

Thanks to The Gentleman, we can add another language to the game: French localization is now available!

Some players also notified me that the game partially handled keyboard inputs in a strange way: Despite using the correct localization in the menus, the game assumed a QWERTY layout as soon as you started playing. That issue is fixed, now. However, you might have to rebind your keys in case you are using an AZERTY layout (for example) with the original key mapping (WASD for movement).

Graphics Options

You can now make the Fog of War visible on your Minimap. In the Graphics Options, you'll see "Fog of War on the Minimap". It is off by default, but can be turned on in Graphics Options.

Some systems have been heavily slowed down when certain lighting options (especially bloom) were active, allowing them to play only on low quality graphics. These lighting options will from now on only be active in high and ultra settings, so if they caused you any trouble, you can enjoy the lighting and shadows of the medium settings, instead of having to choose low quality.

Fixes

Fragile Wire on Custom Maps: Barbed Wire placed next to decor assigned to a different faction* took way too much damage when touched. Only happened on custom maps, should be fixed, now. *) Faction-aligned decor is mostly useless, anyway, will no longer occur on new custom maps.

Some (rare) crashes should be fixed, too - just keep telling me if something bad happens!

Community News

We've had a couple of events since the last update, first of all the TnT Championship 2020.1 - a league with three divisions (beginner, intermediate, premier) and over 50 participants. Well played, everyone! Since the Championship has been casted by different streamers over several weeks, we do not have a complete collection of all the matches, but here are most of the (near) final games. There will probably be a second installment of the Championship in autumn.

We also had a continuation of Gent's famous series of tournaments with special rules, this time: The 21 Clues! All participants could gather and exchange information that helped them pick their targets in four challenges: smuggling contraband (Longcoats), raiding meat hoarders (Commonfolk), catching the assassin (KSR) or preparing the perfect feast, by cooking an enemy with a special "recipe" (Civilized). After catching the assassin and raiding the most meat, Arilou won over the three other finalists: Melvinfro, Mishi (best cooking), and Cyanide Trick (best smuggling). The finals have been casted by Delthius and JetEriksen on ToothAndTailTV.

Delthius also recently celebrated the 100th Episode of his replay casting show The Feast (on ToothAndTailTV, as well) with a wacky tournament, that allowed only Fox, Turret and Artillery Cannon in each player's deck.

The next tournament is going to be the 2v2's Bizarre Adventure, on June 20th, 1pm EDT / 5pm GMT. Each team will consist of one experienced and one learning player, and the experienced player will be assigned one of several pre-defined "bad decks"... only their team mate can save them. The comfortably short rules can be found here!

Salut et bonne bataille ! EELuminatus

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.6.1: Changing Times

Patch 1.6.1.0: Changing Times

Most of the changes in this patch are rather subtle or even behind the scenes. Especially the balance changes are mostly about timing, e.g. allowing surprisingly quick Mole attacks and making it easier to get tier 3 units on the board. It should also lower the efficiency of the popular mass Falcon + Chameleon combo in the late game.

On top of that:

some details have been improved (or fixed) about rally commands and map generation,

the difficulty slider now has a bigger impact on the Civilized missions in the Story Mode,

and some new possibilities have been added for modders.

The community also keeps organizing one event after the other: on top of the new monthly tournament on custom maps, a league for new and experienced players alike is about to start on March 13! See more details below!

Balance:

Mole: the first Mole of each warren spawns as soon as the warren is finished and the Mole is paid

Skunk: gas canisters hit within 0.4s (from 0.5s), even faster if the target is nearby

Chameleon: 0.5s recloak time (from 0.25s)

Falcon: shoots 12 bullets over 1.2s, then reloads for 1.8s (from: 10 bullets over 1s, reload for 1s), damage per bullet is still 1, DPS reduced to 4 (from 5)

Boar: 100 HP (from 110 HP)

Tier 3 & Artillery: 45s build/production time (from 50s)

Flying over Gristmills: air units can no longer stay on top of a Gristmill, that means they can still move over it, but no longer rest or shoot there

Commander Inputs:

easier targeting against ground & air units: if a ground unit and an air unit are on the same tile, you can target the air unit in the upper half of the tile, and the ground unit in the lower half

fix a rare bug that caused some units to ignore the retreat command (hold rally without target)

Map Generation:

improved fairness calculations

inaccessible high ground cannot be as close to a player's spawn base as before

Difficulty Slider (Story Mode):

Some players noticed that the 3rd and 4th Civilized missions (Vacancee Downfall & Sage Marro Speaks) were not sufficiently affected by the difficulty slider - very hard for new players, same old strategy for veterans. With this patch, the difficulty setting will get a much bigger impact on these missions. That means they will be a lot easier on low difficulty, but also more challenging on higher difficulty.

Modding Possibilities:

A few players already started working on Mods, but they want more power... and I'm experimenting with new units/balance, as well. That's why I added support for a couple of mechanics that have not been used in the game, before:

fixed Food Crates placed in the Editor (they disappear when collected, but do not respawn automatically)

added action to set production progress (Type="SetProductionProgress", Value of 0 means no progress, Value of 1 means production finished; used when a new Mole warren has been built)

structures can have the property "AirBlocking": if true, air units cannot stay on top of that structure (see the balance change "Flying over Gristmills")

structures can have the property "BurrowTarget": if true, Commanders can burrow there like they can to Gristmills and Campfires

added action "SpawnStructure" (used like the Owl's SpawnUnit; warning: will only happen when a structure can be spawned at that position and the owner has at least as much as the structure's cost of food in stock, even though the cost will not be automatically substracted from the food stock)

if a structure that provides territory is destroyed, the territory bounds will be adjusted immediately (previously this only worked for Gristmills and Campfires; warning: does not (yet) work when the structure is sold!)

heal/stim behavior can be applied to structures

new status effect "status_blinded" reduces the vision and attack range of affected units/structures to a certain value ("MaxBlindedRange" in balance.xml)

"OutsideTerritory" condition can be used to define the Scope of Events (= effectively the opposite of "InTerritory", but used the same way)

improved display of negative food generation (warning: if you reach negative food stocks, you won't see a minus sign; instead, the displayed number will simply turn red)

Community News:

After several turns of events, the war of the 21 Generals ended somewhat surprisingly. The faction led by (King) James, who emerged victorious from the last couple of events, initially struggled to defend their territory against the insurgents. As soon as the "Royal Knights" recollected, however, they conquered the biggest part of Vyeshal within a few weeks. The rebel armies surrendered, and battles between royalists and mercenaries ensued. One of James' followers, Haru, eventually seized the opportunity to overthrow his leader. Rumor has it that James himself provoked this act of treason by wrongfully suspecting Haru of being a spy all the time. After Haru successfully usurped the over-cautious King, he even managed to beat the mercenary champion Arilou, and thus to end the war.

In the meantime, a new monthly tournament called "Vyeshal Kyawlnez" has been established by JetEriksen this year: a 1v1 tournament on custom mirror maps - a good occasion to see rare, map dependent strategies, as well as some glorious cheese!

This weekend, the Tooth and Tail Championship 2020.1 will start: a new league, with beginner, intermediate, and premier divisions, that will last for several weeks. Currently about 60 players are signed up. The first battles will be casted March 13 to March 15 - time and channel of these (and other TnT streams) will as always be detailed in this thread. (Subscribe if you want to be notified!)

Have fun!

EELuminatus

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.6: "As You Like It" + Season 4

The year starts with a new version of Tooth and Tail! Several new features are focused on more customization and comfort. The headliners are:

a difficulty slider for the campaign,

and Steam Workshop Mod support for multiplayer.

On top of that, the patch also comes with:

a ladder reset (Season 4),

multiplayer balance changes,

some fixes for multiplayer map gen issues,

and a couple of smaller improvements & bug fixes.

Difficulty Slider for Story Mode

You can now scale the difficulty of the campaign whenever you are on the Mission Briefing screen. 20% (lowest) should allow you to get past even the hardest missions, 180% (highest) is supposed to be challenging even for Tooth and Tail veterans. Note that leaderboard entries are only available for standard difficulty (100%), and speedruns as well as heroic achievements are not necessarily easier on reduced difficulty.

Steam Workshop Support for Multiplayer

It's finally live! On Steam you can use the Workshop to upload and play Mods! Mods can include balance changes, completely new units, weapon swaps and more... Try it! Go nuts!

Here's a guide on how to do it!

Ladder Reset: Season 4

Seven players got past 1000 points on the ladder in Season 3, in this order: The Gentleman, ThisGuy, Arilou, Haru, Legomann96, Imari, and James! Congrats!

Now everyone gets back to their starting position and the new season begins!

Multiplayer Balance Changes

All the changes in a nutshell: Toad, Pigeon, Mole nerf; minor nerfs to Skunk, Cham and Snake (daze); Boar and Badger buffs; cheaper (& weaker) Barbed Wire; kind of a Landmine nerf; general Daze nerf (stacking; starts weaker, maxes like before); randomized spawn Farm positions.

All the juicy details:

Toad: 8 HP (from 9 HP), 2 damage in aoe (from 3), 4 direct (from 3), direct damage with 2x structure crit (from no crit)

Pigeon: 3 HP (from 4 HP), 2s cooldown and healing duration (from 1s)

Mole: 12 HP (from 14 HP)

Skunk: 5s gas duration (from 6s)

Chameleon: 34 HP (from 36 HP)

Snake: Daze effect is slowly stacking (see below)

Boar: Boar bomb has 2 tile radius = Lizard range (from 1 tile = melee/Toad)

Badger: 64 HP (from 60 HP)

Barbed Wire: 10 Food cost (from 20 Food), 18 HP (from 28 HP), 2 DPS (from 4 DPS), slowdown to 0.4x speed (from 0.2x speed), 0.25s sell time

Landmine: triggers only if a unit is on the same tile (from 1 tile radius = adjacent tiles), Daze effect is slowly stacking (see below)

Daze: slowdown by 10% per stack (i.e. 2 stacks slow down to 0.8x normal speed), max. daze slowdown is 0.6x (needs 4 stacks)

Farms: spawn positions are randomized (again)

Map Gen Improvements

Fairness calculation overhauled (mostly based on type, accessibility, and elevation level of expansions per player/team).

Cabins are guaranteed to spawn out of range of a spawn Gristmills' farms.

In 2v2, no player can spawn closer to an enemy than to a teammate.

Convenience Improvements, Fixes, Other

You can now access Options (e.g. volume, controls...) without leaving an unranked lobby or the ranked queue.

Crashes in/before the first campaign mission should no longer happen if the Cinematic is disabled.

Fixed some translations and unit descriptions.

Editor no longer crashes when trying to create a new map on Linux (affected only some systems, maybe also Mac).

Commander portraits on the victory screen are positioned correctly, again (opposing factions no longer overlap after 2v2 etc.)

Community News

The 21 Generals event has started! In the pre-season tournaments last weekend, the three faction leaders have been decided:

Jakobi for The Legion (red),

Mishi for the Penal Squad (green),

James for the Royal Knights (blue) - because he prevailed in the last two installments of the 21 Duels. A total of 18 faction players and 12 mercenaries will fight for dominance in Vyeshal over the next few weeks. See the last announcement for more details on this event!

Today, the 10th of January, starting at 6:00 PM EST, a one-shot adventure of the Vyeshal RPG will be played and streamed live on ToothAndTailTV on Twitch. Rumor has it that a well-known Mole and cheese connoisseur might be joining the party. Will his engineering skill be sufficient to make scout mines work, or will he screw up the whole team? Tune in and find out!

-- Have fun! EELuminatus

[pocketwatchgames]

Monaco: Complete Edition for the Nintendo Switch is OUT NOW! Head to the eShop and download it!

A little background on why this may be the perfect platform for the game:

I originally conceived of Monaco as a console game way back in October of 2009. It was written in XNA, and at first it was a very small project that I intended to release on the Xbox 360's indie game store, where self-publishing was allowed. Here's what it looked like back then:

Surprising everyone, Monaco won the Grand Prize in the 2010 Independent Games Festival when it was just 15 weeks into development. I decided that the indie game store on XBLA was too small-fry for an IGF-winning game, but you needed to have a publisher to bring the game to the main XBLA storefront. So I brought it to Microsoft for a publishing deal where it was promptly rejected, saying that the visuals were offputting. So I went back into a work-hole for 6 months to improve the visuals and this is where I ended up:

I brought it back to Microsoft again and was rejected again. Not one to be defeated, I engaged my friends over at Empty Clip Studios to port the game to their in-house engine so I could bring the game to the PS3 instead. Sony, to their credit, was interested. I had the contract sitting on my desk, ready to sign, on the day of the infamous hack of PSN. PSN went down for a week, and it was my impression at the time that their audience never really recovered. So I decided to go look for a third party publisher to help me get the game onto the Xbox after all. This is when Majesco approached us while demoing the game at PAX. They would publish the game on the Xbox 360 while I would retain publishing rights on PC/Mac/Linux.

But the game development gods had more surprises in store for us. Two days before our launch day I started getting reports from reviewers that online games on the Xbox were disconnecting almost immediately. With the help of Microsoft engineers, we discovered that packet size limitations were different on their development network than on their live production network. I was forced to delay our XBox launch until the issue was fixed.

On April 24th, 2013, the game came out on Steam. We got incredible reviews from all the major publications. We had great sales numbers. But the game didn't come out on the Xbox until April 27th. The Xbox missed the launch hype. And like with many online games, if your community numbers falter, the community dies entirely. The PC version sold around 1.7 million copies. The console version... far less.

Despite all the effort undertaken to get the game onto a console, despite the couch being the perfect place to play the game, Monaco on XBLA had flopped.

While I dreamed of bringing it to a handheld system in subsequent years, in particular the PS Vita, my experience with Xbox made me gunshy about spending the time and money. But the community of players around the Steam version continued to grow, with some players into the thousands of hours in the game.

And so, when the Switch was announced, it seemed like the perfect second chance for a console platform. Nintendo is known for their couch multiplayer games, the portability of the system is a dream, and our audience is hungry for another trip to Monaco. Sickhead Games, the guys responsible for the PS4 port of Tooth and Tail, helped us port it. And now it's out.

Monaco, good luck on the respawn!

[pocketwatchgames]

Monaco coming to the Nintendo Switch Monday October 21

I've been asked the question countless times... "Is Monaco coming to the Switch?" "When is Monaco gonna be on the Switch?" "Please wink at me if Monaco is coming to the Switch." . . . .

Well...

Monaco is coming to the Switch. I'm calling it Monaco: Complete Edition because it comes with all the post-launch content added to the PC version after launch: A Survival campaign, detailing the origin stories of each of the thieves, a brutal Epilogue campaign that ties up the loose ends of the epic heist story, and a zombie mode, allowing you to play through the entire game again with the guards replaced by a variety of brain-eating zombies.

We've got Sickhead Games to thank for the port (the guys responsible for the PS4 port of Tooth and Tail). They did an amazing job.

The Switch version supports couch co-op, local networked play (multiple devices playing on a local network over wifi), and of course online play. Play with controller in any configuration, including one player on each joy con.

If you are press and you want a review copy, please reach out to me via twitter at @PocketwatchGames or @AndySchatz. And for everyone else, get ready for MonacoMonday on Monday, October 21st!

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.5.1: Hard Times for the Little Guys

The Distillery Brothers aka "Squirrels" have probably been the most reliable unit type in Multiplayer for a long time. Especially when defending on top of their own warrens, Squirrels often defeated even superior armies. Their safety is now going to be compromised by reducing the tankiness of cheap warrens and generally making mid-game units (tier 2) more of a threat to the small ones.

Also in this patch:

Fine-tuning of random map generation,

Changes to the ranked point system,

And a couple of smaller convenience fixes/impovements (mostly in the UI and menues).

Ranked

Unlike the the Squirrels, new players on Ranked should have an easier time in the future:

Previously, players on the top of the ladder risked to lose a lot of points against low level players. This was meant as a benefit to new players, but also made players at higher ranks play somewhat merciless if they wanted to protect their points. From now on, point gains/losses will be rather low for matches with big rank differences, so the higher-ups can relax and take a more playful approach (e.g. using crazy/random decks), thus letting newer players have more fun, and learn to take their chances.

New ladder score system:

Rank/Points

+6/9 (from 80)

+5/12 (from 78)

+4/17 (from 74)

+3/24 (from 68)

+2/30 (from 60)

+1/24 (from 50)

+0/20 (from 40)

-1/18 (from 30)

-2/15 (from 16)

-3/8 (unchanged)

-4/4 (from 5)

-5/2 (unchanged)

-6/1 (unchanged)

We intend to regularly reset the ladder in the future (at least on PC), letting players race to the top again and again.

Going back to this patch after a new season started will no longer reset ranked points.

For Windows users: If you tab out of the game while queueing on ranked, the minimized game's icon will now start flashing as soon as you find a match. (Not yet possible on Linux & Mac, sorry!)

Discord & Linux/Mac

Discord Matchboard entries now also get reported from Linux & Mac.

Discord rich presence is now working on Linux (is already working on Mac and Windows PCs).

Menus

"Random" map type option is back in unranked/offline lobbies.

Replays of games played on new Editor maps are working now (Workshop maps have already been working).

In order to make existing Editor maps compatible with the replay function, just load and save it, again, or open the map's XML file and change the source tag from Random to Editor. The second trick also works on existing replays.

Steam users can now be subscribed to an unlimited amount of Workshop maps. (Old limit: 50.)

Fixed english ingame description (lore) for Drill Sergeant Volkov and some trait info.

Small convenience improvements and fixes in menus.

Map Generation

Bases generally offer more warren spaces, especially on maps with a lot of water. They can also have more organic-looking surroundings, from now on.

Improved map fairness calculation: Distances between spawn bases and expansions should be more equal. Especially pocket expansions count as a massive advantage in fairness calculation, now.

Slighty increased minimum distance of cabins from spawn Gristmills.

Multiplayer Balance Changes

Squirrel - needs to stand still for a total of 0.25s in order to shoot, so poking and retreating becomes more viable against Squirrels, and they become slightly less efficient in large numbers. To be precise: 0.1s cast time (from 0s), 0.9s cooldown (from 1s), 0.15s movement cooldown (from 0s).

Toad - small buffs to make them more useful, again, especially when microed deep into the enemy army: 9 HP (from 7 HP), 4x structure crit (from 6x) in whole aoe (has been from center tile only), 0.1s fuse time (from 0.25s), +3 damage on their actual target (from 0).

Pigeon - range 3 (from 4), duration 1s (from 2s), cooldown 1s (from 2s), will only stack 3 heals per tier (additional heals will increase only duration; pigs count as t2, mice as t1). Prevents some rare/weird behavior, e.g. 15 HP/s on a single Squirrel, while the Badger slowly dies.

All t2 units (Ferret, Falcon, Skunk, Chameleon, Snake) - will push away units of lower tiers when rallied on top of them. This makes micro management of t2 much more reliable.

Skunk - 30 HP (from 28 HP), gas duration 6s (from 5s).

Boar - 4x Crit against structures (from 6x Crit).

Fox - 22 damage per shot (from 20 damage), 0.4s cast time (from 0.2s), 0.2s root time (from 0.4s), makes better control possible.

Barbed Wire - 4 DPS (from 2 DPS, both to enemies and to itself), especially makes melee units less efficient against wire.

Bullet Hive - 24 HP (from 28 HP), 6 DPS (from 5 DPS).

Balloon - 6 aggro range (from 8 aggro range), reverting a change from last patch that sometimes resulted in strange behavior (not shooting at enemies when it could). Will shoot Commanders normally, again.

Tier 1 Warren - 36 HP (from 50 HP).

Tier 3 Warren - 64 HP (from 50 HP).

Community News

Many thanks to the whole community for the preparation of this patch, providing data, testing features and balance changes etc.

Thank you also for continuously organizing events, participating in them and/or streaming the game!

We've recently had an amazing series of battles, called the "12 Duels Challenge", with more than 30 participants, streamed in 16 Episodes.

Our weekly Pocketbot Cups are now taking place three times each Monday, and we're about to see a small 2v2 tournament becoming yet another frequent event each Tuesday.

On 15th September we'll see the next big event: A "New VS Old" Tournament, which will show us who are the best players of all times. Streamed on: https://www.twitch.tv/wittypun7

Steam only:

At least two big mods are in the making, also introducing new units and structures - and we intend to add Workshop support for customizations like that in future patches.

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.5: Season 3 (and an Eel slipping into the dev team)

While Andy has shifted his daily focus to streaming development of Pocketwatch's next game (Monday-Friday on the Pocketwatch twitch channel), Tooth and Tail shall live on! EELuminatus (you might have seen him playing with Lizards or advertising his mods) will be working on Tooth and Tail patches from now on. A new season has begun…

Ladder Reset

Some players started to feel lonely on the top of the ranked ladder, some wanted to experience the thrill of fighting their way up, again - so we put everyone back to the bottom. Happy climbing!

If the ladder reset hits you just before you managed to complete the ranked achievements: No worries! We just happened to add alternative ways to get them…

Alternative Ways to Obtain Multiplayer Achievements

Some achievements required players to win (lots of) ranked games, which could make them very hard to get. Now there are alternative ways to unlock these achievements, all possible in unranked and offline matches against 1-2 CPU opponents.

Agitator: Win a 1v1 against a medium CPU.

Rabble Rouser: Win a 1v1 against a medium CPU.

Militant: Win a 1v1 against a hard CPU.

Firebrand: Win a 2v1 against two medium CPUs.

Hero of the Hungry: Win a 2v1 against two hard CPUs.

The Great Provider: Win a 2v1 against two brutal CPUs.

Fury of the Feast: Win a 2v1 against two ruthless CPUs.

Deadbones: Win a 1v1 against a ruthless CPU in less than 5 minutes.

(You can only get these achievements on generated maps, not on editor/workshop maps!)

Multiplayer Balance Changes

As a result of mods made and tested by the community, a couple of multiplayer balance changes is coming with this patch. Probably the most important changes in a nutshell are: Toads, Moles and Landmines get nerfed; Chameleons, Boar and Drumfire Cannon get buffed; Snake poison wears off outside territory, but slows down enemies while it lasts.

Now, here are all the juicy details:

Daze - Only slows down movement (slowed down the whole simulation, including attack speed, before). This change makes mines less crippling in fights.

Focus Fire - Can be used for a structure (group), e.g. for letting only your Balloons focus the incoming Badger (not the pigeons) or making your Drumfire Cannon shoot directly at the opponents’ Mill (not the Pigs).

Mole - 2 DPS, 3x crit (from 3 DPS, 2x crit), same power against structures, less against units.

Toad - 7 HP, 3 damage, 6x crit (from 8 HP, 4 damage, 4x crit); structure crit only affects one tile, in the center of the explosion (applied crit to all structures in the aoe, before); aggro 3 tiles from own position (has been 2 tiles from rally point). They lose some of their power, but now they go after Lizards even if they are unattended.

Chameleon - 36 HP (from 30 HP); 0.25s stealth entry time (from 0.5s)

Skunk - 28 HP (from 32 HP); cannot target Commander (could target Commander, before)

Snake - poison is cured 5s after last attack regardless of territory (used to be cured only inside own territory and lasted forever outside territory); poison slows down movement (Daze)

Boar - 6x damage against structures (from 2x damage against structures)

Badger - 60 HP (from 65 HP)

Fox - 24 HP (from 25 HP)

Barbed Wire - slows down movement speed by 80% (from 75%)

Landmine - 4 HP (from 8 HP); 3s Daze duration (from 2s Daze duration), but only slows down movement, not attack speed

Balloon - does not target Commander if enemy units are nearby (within a radius of 8 tiles)

Artillery - 28 DPS (from 20 DPS)

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.4.0: Swine’s Workshop

Save some room after your holiday meals, you'll need it for all the meat in this patch! Sweeping balance changes, as designed and requested by the community -- including Moles that are built from warrens (instead of individually) abd Landmines that apply a Daze effect. The Level Editor is now live and custom maps are playable online and offline. And new multiplayer features like Neutral Cabins guarding the campfires and healing water for those nasty multiplayer burns. Incoming!

Features

Editor

The Level editor we used to create the Story Mode hubs is now available for making multiplayer maps! Custom maps can be played online via Steam Workshop (Steam only) or offline (all platforms except PS4).

Build the balanced map you've always dreamed of and say goodbye to the whims of RNGesus!

Gameplay

Massive changes to some core design incoming! High level players have long complained about Campfires creating too much imbalance and reducing player choice. So we made them into cabins that have a neutral defender that must be killed before claiming!

Campfires are now Cabins

When I originally designed the campfires, this is always what I intended for them to be: civilian pigs holed up in cabins out in the wilderness that you kill and cook on a spit. The cabin resident has a gun that shoots once per second for 3 damage. Once the cabin is destroyed, you must still spend 60 food to light the campfire. Campfires can be extinguished and re-lit just as before.

Change your Deck size

You can now battle with up to 9 unit types, or as few as 1! Try out vs battles with the original 3 units we designed the game around: squirrel, ferret, and bullet hive.

Also:

Water heals in multiplayer - 1 HP per second, even outside territory.

Water slows to 60% in multiplayer - (was 50%).

Super Random Decks Random decks now choose 1 tier 1 unit and then fill the remaining slots with entirely random selections.

Balance Changes

Some sweeping changes to unit balance, as researched and tested by our community! Aside from the headline Mole and Landmine changes, one subtle but interesting change is that short range units now also have a slightly shorter aggro range, preventing them from getting pulled and sniped quite so easily.

Mole- Now spawns from a single tile warren, which can be built anywhere. Up to 3 moles can spawn from the warren, like any other Tier 1 unit. Mole Warren has 25 HP. Mole now has 14 HP, 3 DMG, 6 DMG to structures (was 21/2/5). Aggro range is 3 (was 4).

Lizard- 8 HP (was 7). Aggro range of 3 (was 4)

Squirrel- 0 second cast time, 1 second cooldown (was 0.25, 0.75). Removed movement freeze (was 0.25 seconds)

Toad- 8 HP, 4 DMG to all affected units, 16 DMG to structures (was 7HP, 12 DMG to target, 3 DMG to AOE, no structure crit). Aggro range of 3 (was 4)

Chameleon- 8 DMG/30 HP (was 6/40). Stealth Entry/Exit time is now 0.5/0 seconds (was 0.25/0.25). Aggro range of 2 (was 4)

Skunk- 32 HP (was 29)

Snake- 0 second movement freeze after attacking (was 0.25)

Boar- 110 HP (was 100)

Fox- 20 DMG per shot (was 24)

Balloon- 14 DMG/20 HP (was 15/30). Visibility of 12 tiles (was 10). Fires every 2 seconds (was 3)

Landmine- 8 HP, 18 Single target DMG, 2 DMG AOE (was 5 HP, 12 AOE DMG). Explosion radius 2 tiles (was 1.75). Activation time is 0.25 seconds (was 0.4) Applies a 1 second daze to all affected units that reduces attack/movement speed to 60%.

[pocketwatchgames]

Patch 1.3.0: Story Mode Standard Seeds & Leaderboards

HUGE Story Mode patch -- we've now got a Standard, non-random campaign and leaderboards! Players can choose to play Standard, Random, or with a Custom Seed.

When playing Standard, you can compete on leaderboards for time and score! Rank on the leaderboard is determined by your time in hundredths of seconds, plus the total food value lost over the course of the mission, minus your net worth at the end of the mission. Scores where your final net worth exceeds the total food value lost are displayed with a "+" before them. Leaderboards didn't make it to the PS4 build this patch, sorry!

If Story Mode isn't what floats your boat, there's also some balance changes and a major revision to map generation. Have fun!

Balance Changes

Squirrel - 0.25 second movement freeze after shooting (was 0.4)

Toad - 7 HP (was 8). Primary and AOE damage is now centered on closest tile when targeting 2x2 structures

Chameleon - 40 HP (was 38)

Snake 28 HP (was 30)

Falcon - 1.2 seconds of firing, 0.8 second cooldown (was 1.5 seconds and 0.5 seconds)

Owl - 40 HP (was 50), no longer stop moving over enemies

Barbed Wire can now hit stealthed Chameleons

Landmines can now hit stealthed Chameleons

Structures no longer heal if they are not in your territory

Territory now symmetrical on all sides of mills and fires, resulting in larger territory

New Features

Story Mode Standard and Random Seeds.

Standard Story Leaderboards

Map generation now adds ramps around spawn to prevent high ground within 3 tiles of spawn farms

Map generation now takes water into account when assessing fairness

Map generation now compares natural expansion distances when assessing fairness

Map generation changed to create more organic shapes around bases instead of fortress-like topography

Map fairness variables added to map generation xmls

Single Player Balance updated to current multiplayer stats

Bug Fixes

Story Mode - Meat will no longer spawn inside rocks

Repeating sound bug fixed