#robotality

Publisher and developer Chucklefish, and developer Robotality have announced turn-based strategy game sequel Wargroove 2 for Switch and PC (Steam). A release date was not announced.

Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:

About

Wargroove is back! Embark on an all-new adventure, filled with unlikely friendships, unknown adversaries, and ugly revenge plots. Wage war against your foes with a cast of new Commanders and utilize their new tiered ‘groove’ ability system to sway the fight in your favour. Design and share maps, cutscenes, and campaigns with easy-to-use editors and in-depth customization tools.

Command the Land, Sea, and Sky

Three years have passed since Queen Mercia and her allies defeated the ancient adversaries and restored peace to Aurania. Now, an ambitious foreign faction is unearthing forbidden technologies that could have catastrophic consequences for the land and its people. Battle your way through three Campaigns following one interweaving story. Only bold decisions, smart resourcing, and tactical know-how can repair a fractured realm…

All-New Groove System

Take down your enemies and deliver the final blow with your Commander’s “Groove,” a special skill unique to each Commander that can turn the tides of battle. Wargroove 2 introduces a new Groove system to the mix. Increase your chances of victory by supercharging your Commander’s Groove ability to unleash an even more powerful attack!

Lead a Roguelike Conquest

Conquest is a brand new roguelike single-player game mode. In these quick-paced, bite-sized battles every choice is permanent. Gold and health carry from skirmish to skirmish, and no unit is dispensable. Choose your Commander, starting troops and plan your route to victory!

Create, Customize, and Share the Art of War

Sick of the rules? Change ’em! Want to write a soul-wrenching novella about forbidden love in a war-torn land? Eat your heart out! There’s something for everyone. Using the in-game editor you can create custom maps, cutscenes and campaigns, and even share them with the community!

Make Frenemies Today!

Play up to four player co-op or versus battles, locally or online. Featuring complete rule-customization and asynchronous play. Can’t wrangle your besties into battle? Come join our Discord and find a partner!

Watch the announcement trailer below. View the first screenshots at the gallery.

Announce Trailer

I love turn based games. In fact, the reason you're not reading this mini-review sooner is because after playing Pathway for 40 hours, I was pulled into a Civ 5 multiplayer frenzy (it’s a long story) and I haven't had a free evening since. I deleted Civ yesterday (because that shit is heroin) and so here we are, finally talking about the game with the most advanced pixel art graphics engine so far.

I mean look at the screenshots. It’s gorgeous. Ever since the game was announced, I meticulously analyzed every screenshot that the german developer Robotality put out. I touched upon the behind-the-scenes stuff in my pre-release post and suffice it to say this is some advanced black pixel magic (much like the game’s supernatural nazi-cultist setting). 

The art is joined in perfect unison with the incredible music score, immersing you into your very-own Indiana Jones turn-based strategy adventure. The game is a casual entry into the tactical genre with fast-paced, easy-to-comprehend combat. Fighting is very predictable with shots always landing when there is a clear line of sight (hit percentages are also always right there in the HUD to indicate otherwise). With good strategy you can often get in and out of a fight in 2 or 3 turns. Great for short, relaxing evening sessions, rather than hardcore strategizing.

The glue that holds the numerous randomized battles together is a board-game-like map of Africa and the Middle East, the home of scorching-hot sand dunes, palm tree-filled oases, brick-built villages, and mysterious underground temples. Each of the five campaigns has an enveloping story that tries to give purpose to your team’s expedition, but due to the procedurally generated nature of adventures, you’ll find the random situations you get yourself into more interesting on their own, rather than supporting a progression of the overall arch.

The lush story vignettes are beautifully illustrated and offer a chance for your characters to lead to extra riches and equipment, the latter of which is the key to progression in the game. The 16 available recruits have unique skillsets and combining them into expedition parties offers plenty of varied playstyles. You’ll replay the campaigns often, but that’s by design as you get to try different team compositions and embark on a whole new set of shenanigans, some of which are available only with specific character perks.

Adventure into the strange unknown with Pathway, a strategy RPG set in the 1930s great desert wilderness. Outwit your enemies in daring turn-based combat, raid occult tombs and make tough choices in a procedurally generated grand pulp expedition!

Pathway’s release is just around the corner! While there’s no date yet, the development is in its final moments and the game’s publisher Chucklefish (Wargroove, Stardew Valley) released a 10-minute gameplay video from the Wrath of God campaign (second of the five adventures you’ll be able to embark on in Pathway). So if you haven’t heard me rave about the next best turn-based tactical strategy game yet, the new footage shows exactly what we’ll soon be getting into.

Some of you know I’m on my March Indie Eurotrip right now. As a fan of everything pixel art+3D, I made it a special priority to stop in Hamelin, Germany, the home of Pathway developer Robotality. The company was founded by the Bachmann brothers in 2013, with their debut title Halfway coming out in July the following year. In fact, Halfway—as the name similarity hints—already featured quite some of the turn-based combat mechanics you’ll find in Pathway. Everything else is new in the follow-up however, whether it’s navigating a board-game-like map, random-generated story events and encounters, quicker pace designed around replayability, or Indiana Jones/Adventures of Tintin setting.

The crown jewel of course (at least for this blog) is the new graphics engine that supports dynamic 3D lighting with pixel-perfect art assets. I got a peek behind the scenes of the different tools and techniques that the guys use and it’s as clever and complex as I imagined it would be. There are multiple tools and modes that deal with embedding the 3D information into 2D pixel art sprites, from voxel and low-poly 3D-geometry bases (manually pixeled on top with perfect control over texture and details), to ground contours that project the bottoms of the sprites to correct depth for perfect shadow positioning. Perhaps the most surprising part was that almost every scene object eventually ends up converted to pure, untextured polygons (as in, there’s almost no trace of the source pixel art textures in the game at all, pixel clusters get triangulated into different-colored polygon meshes).

Getting my hands on the gameplay was just as satisfying as nerding about the art production pipeline, even if I annoyed the developers by taking my sweet-ass time staring at each location more than actually playing the game. (I have no regrets!)