#tactical games

[ashenpumpkin]

GO PLAY TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS RIGHT FUCKING NOW

okay but here's the actual review.

Tactical Breach Wizards, or TBW, is a comedic tactical sim game taking place in the far future. You play as a rogue team of wizards led by one Zan Vesker in an attempt to stop world war 5 he saw in a vision into the future.

It has a unique mechanic related to Zan's powers which allow you to "rewind" actions you taken this turn of combat and change your mind on what you wish to do, as well as being able to "foresee" what will be the enemies actions after yours before you commit to the end of your turn. This creates a fun environments to experiment with a variety of solutions to the fun challenges and puzzles the game throws at you.

Also you get to defenestrate [Verb, 1: To throw (something or someone) out of a window.] a lot

Scoring:

Writing [10/10]: The game is funny, like seriously funny, while still maintaining a very interesting story, and managing to hit powerful somber notes [such as conversations held with Dall], as well as intrigue. The characters are well rounded, and their banter is wonderful. The ability to delve into the "chats" option and explore various character interactions and conversations as the story progresses is really enjoyable.

Artstyle [10/10]: The game is beautiful, the character designs are on point, you can do bonus objectives to unlock cool skins for your characters. The artstyle conveys the different areas the game takes place in, and their culture and style from it.

Gameplay [9/10]: Responsive, Fun, Easy to understand but hard to master. The levels and challenges the game provides left me very satisfied. There's manually adjustable difficulty settings to make the game harder or easier to your preference, fitting even people who aren't the biggest fans of tactical sims. My only complaint is that some of the bonus challenges can not be completed during your initial playthrough of a level, requiring a revisit later. As well as one of the achievement being missable in the the first mission, and that mission cannot be replayed, forcing you to delete your save if you want 100% completion.

Music and Audio [9/10]: Your moves as a player have satisfying sound design, the music slaps throughout the game, menuing sounds smooth, actions taken feels smooth, cutscenes sound great. I just wish each combat music track was a bit longer, to avoid hearing it loop from the start on the harder stages.

also there's this cat, as well as tactical wizard yuri if you play your cards right.

in conclusion, i rate the game a [9.5/10]. And i highly recommend you go buy it. There's even a free demo for you to try out! GO PLAY IT!

[zestysthoughts]

Tep Tons: Video Games (2024)

10: Minecraft Legitimately, a great game. Every now and then I'll return to it and it's just a good time, the grind can get pretty monotonous though. Best horror experience, would get annihilated by the Warden again.

9: Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus Everything I'd want from an RPG, and exactly what I'm looking for in a tactics game. Unfortunately pacing is really sluggish, in part because the controls and activations are kinda clunky. I'm excited for the sequel! Would replace my flesh with machine again.

8. 140 A short and sweet indie game. An abstract musical platformer with boss fights and a bumpin' soundtrack. Unfortunately Carlsen Games doesn't seem to have made any more games after this and Thoth. Would get slapped by giant blocks of static again.

7. Saints Row: The Third Few games have given me as much joyous mirth as this. It's one of those franchises where if you took elements from every game and mashed them into one, you'd have a perfect game. Would use the Penetrator again.

6. Redout 2 An improvement over the original in almost every way. The butt-clenching speed, the satisfying weight of the ships, the extensive customization, this is probably the game I'm most skilled at. The campaign is overlong and the music isn't quite as iconic as the first though. Would blow up from overheating again.

5. Portal 1 and 2 It's a twofer! Both are a delight. They're funny, spooky, clever, haunting, beautiful games. Unfortunately I haven't been able to fully experience the co-op, where apparently some real juicy puzzles are at. Would break the Aerial Faith Plates again.

4. Warframe A great game getting better and better with every update. I love the world, the story, the gameplay, the weapons, even Duviri! Probably #2 in the amount of time I've put into it. Unfortunately this is the game that killed any interest in game grinding I might've had. Would breathe Vay Hek's air again.

3. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild The first LoZ game I'd actually played, and it was so delightful! It's a cozy world I found a lot of peace and relaxation in, even the combat was pleasing. Unfortunately while TotK expanded on it mechanically, it may as well have retconned everything else for the amount of impact BotW had on it. Would hunt Lynels again.

2. Starcraft 2 My favorite game of all time. I've been in love with this world since I was a wee lad, and my teens were dominated by SC2. Definitely the game I've sunk the most time into, especially co-op and campaigns. The gameplay is buttery smooth, and I'm terrible at it lol. Unfortunately you can see the campaign was too ambitious for the time/funding they were allowed, so the quality of animation, writing, and production take some dips, as well as some of the content added toward the end of development. Still, one of the only games to make me cry even today. Would give my life for Aiur again.

1. Undertale Again, legitimately a great game, the greatest game of all time. No meme, I adore this game and my favorite character unironically is Sans. I love a character with an otherworldly understanding of what's going on. It's been dissected to death so I won't harp on it, just know that everything about it is wonderful. Hot take though, Megalovania is totally overrated. Would eat the spaghetti again.

[sweetsandmemes]

Was listening to Warrior of the Mind and it just reminded me Fire Emblem or Persona.

So I would like to think Athena, as in the goddess, would play those types of games. So that’s my headcanon for a Greek goddess.

[accecakes]

It’s a darn gosh shame 😞

SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

[ordosmarkzero]

The Banner Saga

[nokikissa]

Couple low quality Darrell gifs I made for funsies :3

[kyl3dawolf]

fallout tactics, 2001

[wickworks]

Lancer Tactics dialogue layout crisis of faith

(from this month's backer update)

Every so often, I'll run into something in development that eats away at me until it pushes me to a crisis of faith and I have a breakdown, burn down a bunch of work, and build something better from the ashes. These are moments of transformation and we're almost always able to come out the other side with something much better than what we started with.

This all sounds very dramatic until you take a step back and see the issue in question is just, like, the layout of a menu. But if medieval priests were able to have schisms over angels on pins I can have strong feelings about graphic design, dammit!

This month's episode revolved around how we're doing character dialogue. For reference the plan was to do a standard 4-slot visual-novel talking heads layout. I call it a 4-slot because there's usually four positions that characters can stand; two on the left, two on the right:

I had it ingame, and it was working. But... something felt off. Do you see the difference between every one of the above examples and this?

It's all about perspective, baby.

Answer: all the character art in those examples are drawn at a slight angle so they can be flipped back and forth to be made like they're looking at each other.

Trying to do this with the perspective we chose early — straight on — makes for a chorus line of weirdos who are looking directly into your soul as they ostensibly chat with each other. Credulity is strained; the illusion of these puppets interacting in the same space is paper-thin.

(I was skeptical of choosing this perspective for this reason, but we ultimately went with it to make the customizable assets in the portrait maker easier to fit together)

We tried a bunch of different layouts, but they all at least one of these problems:

they'd stare into your soul while ostensibly directing comments elsewhere.

they felt like text messages; this would be fine if that's what we were going for, but we wanted something that could represent face-to-face conversations. (Tactical Breach Wizards was able to pull this style off because they had little 3D dioramas to go along with it)

or, most damning of all, they felt like zoom calls.

So, my heart aflutter and spirit in want, I spent a day doing a research dive into various dialogue layouts (bless the Game UI Database!) to see if any other games had managed to pull this character art perspective off. I ended up with this massive non-chronological taxonomic tree:

(fullsize here)

The type of layout that particularly caught my eye was this style where each character had their own little box. These layouts borrow a concept from comic books called "closure" where the space and time between characters are left blank. Freed from the constraints of trying to simulate a single space, these layouts allow the reader to fill in the blanks with something that feels more true-to-life than anything we'd be able to render ourselves.

I was especially impressed with the dynamism of Tales of Symphonia and The World Ends With You; rather than sticking to single slots they would animate the entire panels moving around to indicate motion an relative position of characters.

So we threw out the old code and copied them. Here's what we've come up with:

We'll be able to have portraits interact, like smacking each other (I felt like a kid hitting two action figures together, lol)

We can also apply effects like princess-leia-holograms and full-screen "lighting" effects like warning banners:

Carpenter and I came up with a number of arrangements that the portraits can smoothly transition between:

I've also implemented support for choices during a dialogue, potentially leading to branching paths.

Overall, I feel SO much better about this system than our initial designs. It might feel a little more cartoony, but I think we're making a cartoony game so that's not a problem.

Whew. We bit a lot off to chew with this project. I feel like I just made a second visual novel game engine inside of the first. Fingers crossed that it all ends up worth it.

[dessa-banks]

Breach!

Tactical Breach Wizards (2024)

[waterdroid]

I saw that one "Mission Complete" screen (you know the one) and felt a sudden urge to draw the funniest way that could've happened. I don't actually know if this is funny at all because I've spent too much looking at it, enjoy!!

[azurevoltage]

Semi-cute witch

[riza-hawks-eye]

Matching Outfits You Say???????

[ordosmarkzero]

The Banner Saga

[jeeaark]

What If....Bonus alternative result to Greygold's insight check on Durge's intimidation check shenanigan.

[turtleblogatlast]

Leo being put into a situation where there is absolutely no fighting, just verbal manipulation and perception games, would be amazing to witness. We see a lot in the series how good he is at subterfuge and how he uses his perception to manipulate to great effect, so it’d be so cool to really see it put to the test even more.

Manipulation is one of the most effective tactical strategies of all time, so just imagine Leo putting this skillset of his to the full test. Imagine the boys slowly get up to busting bigger and more powerful criminals, including those with networks of crime under their belt, and a simple fight isn’t enough to take them down. For criminals like this, Leo’s skills in subterfuge would be deadly.

[a-single-slice-of-toast]

Not enough people talk about the quality settings for Tactical Breach Wizards

You should play Tactical Breach Wizards btw