Growing up Ojibwe' game teaches about treaty rights, tribal sovereignty
Growing up Ojibwe' game teaches about treaty rights, tribal sovereignty
Growing up Ojibwe' game teaches about treaty rights, tribal sovereignty
By Keith Burgun
March 05, 2021
Summary
I've been doing a lot of thinking over the last few years about short arcs and long arcs in strategy game design.
These games are interesting, because while they have long arcs in terms of the RPG mechanics and inventory management, in a way they really can be described as a looping tactical engine.
Winning the larger game can be expressed as a "Tally" of how many times you won the short Thinking more about smaller turn based/tile based games, I find that a lot of the time tactics seems to become dominant.
The classical way that developers have added longer arcs to tactical games has been to have a second screen, from which you draw a few variables, such as which troops have survived, what loot you've found, and things like that.
What if you're interested in asking the question: "How can I make the tactical game - the battlefield game *itself* - more strategic?" That was my starting place when I started working on Gem Wizards Tactics back in 2019.
Since then I've picked up a few pieces of advice that I think are applicable to almost anyone making a turn-based tactics game, if they want to give it some longer arcs.
The size your grid should be is going to vary wildly for most games, but I think in order to have longer arc grid-based decisions, you're going to need the grid to be at least something like 10x10, 12x12, or something in that ballpark.
Just a quick caveat that of course you also want to be careful not to make your grid so large so that the game just becomes tedious.
The classical "Entire turns spent just moving your units forward" problem has plagued many turn based games.
Technique #2: Visible long term choices: Most games have some kind of "Information horizon" - a line or a state, beyond which which information is hidden from the player.
Reference
Burgun, K. (2021, March 5). Adding strategy to your tactics. Retrieved June 03, 2021, from https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KeithBurgun/20210305/378171/Adding_Strategy_to_your_Tactics.php