Hey, rulers!
What a time to be alive, huh? Wherever you live, you probably noticed that the news headlines seem to get crazier by the day: we're even guessing how long it will take before they become undistinguishable from our
YouTube videos’ headlines. In any case, as we believe that violence should stay in video games, we keep making Warnament, not war.
[h3]A Year at War(nament)[/h3]
The name ‘Glorious Evolution’ was chosen for this piece for a reason: little by little, we found ourselves with quite a different game by the end of the year. Here's a very brief list of the biggest changes we made in the past 12 months:
- Completely reworked map visuals
- New interface
- Win/lose conditions for the game
- Reworked economy
- A bunch of new visual effects, sounds and music
- A whole galaxy of new gameplay mechanics for war & peace
And of course, there was the glorious
Warnament release on Google Play! Although it still is an early access version, you can try it for free, if a you own one of the (thousands of) supported devices.
Effectively, this creates a situation in which Warnament is simultaneously available in 3 forms (almost like an anime character, or maybe a boss from a soulslike game!). Let's review them real quick:
Steam: currently, only the demo is available here, but this will be the main platform for us for Early Access on PC, so make sure you add Warnament to your wishlist to get notified when it happens. The demo is updated as often as other versions, but has limited content.
Itch.io: there's a demo that you can
launch in your browser, and you can also get access to the closed beta for a small fee (starting at $0.99). It's playable on PC, Mac and Linux, it has full content, and comes with the standalone map editor.
Android: has pretty much the same content as the closed beta, but is only playable on Android devices (duh). It's free to play, with an option to buy cosmetic stuff. And there's no map editor on Android.
At some point in the future all these platforms will be synced with each other in terms of gameplay features (pretty much like a giant robot assembles from smaller robots in anime!). We'll be in touch when this day arrives. As for now, let's talk about the most recent improvements of Warnament.
Getting back to the Android version: it has badges now! Fancy little ribbons that are given out for committing certain actions (like wishlisting the game on Steam), winning in community tournaments, and being an admin on
Warnament's Discord Server. Unlocking the cosmetics also grants a special badge:
One day those pretty things will appear on Steam too, don't you worry!
As for more meaningful and gameplay-related features, the province menu has gone through a massive upgrade. Now you can view the economy, population, and amount of money per turn of any country on the map (e.g. you can check the population of the enemy's province and think a hundred times whether it's worth attacking the enemy):
From the same menu, you can see information about the whole country, including those that you do not rule yet - given that you are not in war with, nor under sanctions of that country:
The provinces are now playing a much bigger role in the game: whether it's a small town or a big city will influence your economy and the production in an individual provice itself. For one, factories perform better, when built in cities, so mind that when planning your budget.
Next thing that was massively improved is multiplayer. Most changes happened under the cape, but you will definitely notice them, if you play online frequently.
- Servers started from singleplayer mode are now much more stable (that part of code was written from scratch)
- You can now create multiplayer sessions on custom maps
- Added spectator mode to the game
- Added an option to select a country when connecting to a server. You can pick any country that is not yet taken by another player
- Next features that we're planning to add include teamplay mode and an in-game event schedule
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If you prefer a more hand-tailored gameplay instead (or in addition to) the joy of collective online madness, we've added an option to create events in user-made scenarios. With the latest update, you can make bots encounter these events as well:
But whatever's your preferred way to conquer the world, there's now an option to review your glorious deeds once it's over: we have finally added timelapse mode to the game, and it looks mesmerizing:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Oh, and here's the latest gameplay video from our channel, in case you missed it:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The next big feature we're working on will probably become a great source material for timelapses: we're planning to add historical mode to the game, in which the events will be synced with the main dates from the history books. Have fun messing up the past! We'll introduce it in one of the next updates.
Until we meet again!
