Do you plan on having any kind of campaign, or are you focusing exclusively on the battles?
There are “campaigns” that consist of a string of related battles with historical context and more limited unit selection, where you follow along the battles of a single commander (or some other theme), but there is as yet no plan for a turn/grid-based 2D strategic map layer. At some point in the future, I may look into a simple map-based campaign to provide an operational level of war context to battles (maybe a hex map, maybe point-to-point or region-based movement), but for now, the focus is all on major pitched battles in real-time with intelligent AI.
I don’t want to sound annoying, but I think the game would look way better with more realistic units. Why have you decided to follow an art style so close to that of Second Front?
There are several considerations to take into account with the art style. The units are meant to evoke tabletop miniatures rather than real life, in congruence with the game mechanics, so the models emphasize thick dimensions, larger-than-life movements, and a colourful, painted look. Similarly, the maps are meant to resemble tabletop terrains with simple, clear divides between different types of ground, water features, or foliage that affect units in distinct ways. This helps everything be readable from the great distance the game is played, whereas realistic units tend to look like a grey-brown shimmer from such a distance. Also, given that Strategos is largely a one-man project with contracted artwork, the art style allowed us to produce 100s of distinct units, with many modular pieces and varied appearance, rapidly and at a reasonable cost. Realistic units would have a much higher poly count, more complex textures, many more LOD levels, specular/metallic maps, and so on that would make each unit many times as time-consuming and expensive to produce, and much less performant, for relatively limited benefit to gameplay, as the game is mostly played zoomed out.
What is your favourite battle from antiquity?
I think I’ll have to choose the battle of Issos. It was the first time Alexander faced the Persian King himself on the battlefield, and he attacked uphill across a stream with lancers and pikemen while greatly outnumbered, and somehow won.
Thank you so much for this interview, I’ll see you when the game goes live!
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