The next game to be released during my time at Phyken Media would see our collection of Wizards putting on their thinking hats to engage in tactical turn-based adventures. On my side of things, I had to gear up my mind in order to dive into the world of online multiplayer.
I began with a local mode in which players could pass a device back and forth to take their turns, but soon I was working with our server engineer to send turns of tactical wizardry across the internet. Maintaining the state of the battlefield and describing each player's actions accurately was the key. There were numerous hitches and pitfalls along the way as we added new features that intervened in the order of events.
Keeping with the commando half of the theme, Wizard Ops Tactics played heavily with the idea of fog of war and information control. Drawing inspiration from the Advance Wars series, player's best laid plans could be interrupted if they encountered an unexpected foe in the mists.
Wizard Ops Tactics sought to award players for enacting elaborate schemes through it's resource management and combo system. A player's whole squad has a combined energy pool that fuels their various abilities and they can also gain energy by performing actions. However, you can queue up as many actions as you wish before executing and each successive action grants a multiplier on energy gained via landing attacks.
The idea here was to create a risk-reward system where executing more actions at once can grant more power, but if the plan runs into an enemy trap a few steps in, the whole operation could go off-course.
I also believe there were some stage-based super abilities that could be used by the players themselves, complete with a cut-in of their chosen avatar. I had forgotten about this until I went back to watch the trailer. However, as soon as I saw the Crab Battle on the beach stage, it all came flooding back.
I began with a local mode in which players could pass a device back and forth to take their turns, but soon I was working with our server engineer to send turns of tactical wizardry across the internet. Maintaining the state of the battlefield and describing each player's actions accurately was the key. There were numerous hitches and pitfalls along the way as we added new features that intervened in the order of events.
Keeping with the commando half of the theme, Wizard Ops Tactics played heavily with the idea of fog of war and information control. Drawing inspiration from the Advance Wars series, player's best laid plans could be interrupted if they encountered an unexpected foe in the mists.
Wizard Ops Tactics sought to award players for enacting elaborate schemes through it's resource management and combo system. A player's whole squad has a combined energy pool that fuels their various abilities and they can also gain energy by performing actions. However, you can queue up as many actions as you wish before executing and each successive action grants a multiplier on energy gained via landing attacks.
The idea here was to create a risk-reward system where executing more actions at once can grant more power, but if the plan runs into an enemy trap a few steps in, the whole operation could go off-course.
I also believe there were some stage-based super abilities that could be used by the players themselves, complete with a cut-in of their chosen avatar. I had forgotten about this until I went back to watch the trailer. However, as soon as I saw the Crab Battle on the beach stage, it all came flooding back.
A sequel to Wizard Ops Tactics was planned that sought to streamline the gameplay and the team-building process. The base game used a point-buy system where each unit and weapon had a cost for bringing it in to battle and if I recall correctly, battles could take place at various tiers of power which would limit the scope of each player's forces.
The sequel had army templates that players could unlock that would let them slot in forces and items of various strength in order to compose their squad. The sequel also removed the fog of war mechanics, but it kept the capability of some units to sneak around unseen. Overall, I believe it was set up to be more intuitive while keeping much of what made the game fun.
Oh yes, in addition to being the first online multiplayer title I worked on, this was also my first truly free-to-play mobile title, as it featured in-game purchases to unlock booster packs of units and the like. While I contributed a great deal to the design of both Wizard Ops titles, I was not so adept at interweaving the game with the business side of things. Thankfully, I had a team to help wear the hats that fit poorly on my head.
The sequel had army templates that players could unlock that would let them slot in forces and items of various strength in order to compose their squad. The sequel also removed the fog of war mechanics, but it kept the capability of some units to sneak around unseen. Overall, I believe it was set up to be more intuitive while keeping much of what made the game fun.
Oh yes, in addition to being the first online multiplayer title I worked on, this was also my first truly free-to-play mobile title, as it featured in-game purchases to unlock booster packs of units and the like. While I contributed a great deal to the design of both Wizard Ops titles, I was not so adept at interweaving the game with the business side of things. Thankfully, I had a team to help wear the hats that fit poorly on my head.
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