Time for an Update

It's been a long time since we wrote a blog post, way too long actually. So here's a long overdue update on what's happening. We haven't been idle in the last months, but it's mainly been behind the scenes work; sketching out and prototyping ideas for new games. We're happy with the progress and I expect we'll be able to give you a first look somewhere this summer.
Personally, I've also been practising my programming skills. Specifically, I've been learning to use C# in Unity3D, since that's the language we'll most probably use for our next big project (and the language Quill18 uses in his great programming tutorials). I've had a lot of fun coding and it resulted in a small side project that will get its own blog post in a while.

But the main news I have for you today is that there is a Powargrid update in the works. It will add a couple of features to the game, two of which I'd like to share here.

First off, we've decided to add support for games with more than two players to Powargrid. Multiple people have requested this, so we hope this will be a welcome addition to the game. How many players are supported will differ from map to map, but the maximum is eight. It will be possible to play in teams or to initiate a free for all (imagine that with 8 players ;). Both of these modes should bring new strategic considerations to Powargrid compared to one versus one games.

​Another thing in the update we can already show you is a new skirmish / multiplayer map called March to War:

Gameplay-wise, this map took quite some tweaking to get right. The basic premise is simple: have multiple viable paths to reach your enemy, in this case two impassable areas that can be shot over with cannons. But as always, the devil is in the details. It turns out that having a path through the middle leaves too little relevance for the sides of the map, which means that the map is not much different from one that is simply narrower in the middle. Eventually we figured out that we could create a more interesting map by making the path through the middle longer. This created the dynamic we were looking for and we're very happy with the end result, both for the gameplay and the looks.

We'll release this update at the end of May. When we know the exact date, we'll post it here. Also, if you've bought Powargrid on Steam, you should receive a notification in Steam somewhere in the first week after the update. There is one more thing we're adding in this update, but we'll tell you about that in the next blog post (which we'll write soon, I promise :).

- Willem -