Wargroove 2 News

The Wargroove 2 Demo returns for Steam Strategy Fest!

Hi everyone! 👋
We’re excited to announce that the Wargroove 2 demo will be live this week for Steam Strategy Fest! Our tougher than nails demo will be available from August 28th - September 4th, starting at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT / 6pm BST / 7pm CEST / 2am JST / 1am CST.

🌍 Available in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Brazillian Portuguese, Japanese & Chinese

Try out our new game mode coming to Wargroove 2: Conquest. A single-player roguelike mode completely new to Wargroove 2, as well as access to online and local co-op Multiplayer skirmishes!

⚔️ What’s Conquest 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. For the Bitsummit demo, you’ll be able to choose between the Cherrystone Commanders, including Dark Mercia or our new Commander from the Saffron Island Rebels - Nadia!

🎮 How do I start a Multiplayer game?
In this demo you can play both Online and Local Multiplayer modes with up to 4 players, with a limited number of Commanders old and new alike at your disposal (you might notice though that we’re keeping a few a secret for now!)

To kickstart a match, select ‘Multiplayer’ from the menu and select either Local or Online. For an Online match, you can join a friend’s match by selecting the button to the bottom right and join with a code, or host a New Match and have a friend (or stranger!) join your game.
Looking for people to play with? Join our Discord and find folks who want to play!

Twitch Integration
This demo build also has Twitch integration using Wargroove 2's new unit renaming feature! Simply select the Twitch icon at the bottom left of the title screen and authorize "Wargroove 2". When you spawn or recruit a new unit, it will be bestowed a name from a lovely participant in your Twitch chat!

👀 What else will be in the full game?

6 Factions with 22 Commanders
3 Campaigns, interwoven by an explosive conclusion
5 new units, bringing the total unit types to 26
Conquest mode - the new roguelike game mode
Local and Online Multiplayer
Map & custom campaign creation tools
Original OST by Dale North
French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Simplified Chinese localisation

🗪 Where can I share feedback?
Thank you for checking out our game! Please feel free to share any demo feedback you have in this Steam Forums thread. If you enjoyed the demo, and want to find out more about Wargroove 2, find us on Twitter or come and join the official Wargroove Discord. The development team often pops in to answer questions and share insights on the game’s development. Lastly, be sure to wishlist the game for notification as soon as the full game is available later this year!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1346020/Wargroove_2/

Enjoy the demo!
-Chucklefish & Robotality

Lay down your swords and pick up your hammers, we’ve got new creator tools!

Hey folks!

I’m Simon from Robotality, one of the development leads on Wargroove 2. If you’ve been hanging out in The Wargroove discord, then you may well already know me :) With Wargroove 2 coming to PC and Switch later this year, we thought we’d take the time to give you a sneak peek at some of the new and improved custom creation tools we’ve been working on.

Before we start - if you're heading to Gamescom this week, come and play Wargroove 2 at the Nintendo area of the Indie Arena Booth! The demo is also fully localised into English, French, German, EU Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Simplified Chinese.

Right back to the devblog! Firstly, if you’ve used our map and campaign tools before, you’ll be happy to know that all the content (and much more!) will still be available for you to create your best battles. If you’re new to the world of custom creation, these tools have never been easier to jump right into. Without further ado, let's take a look at some of the new additions.

Symmetry Tool It’s now easier than ever to balance your multiplayer maps with the help of the 5 symmetry tool options. These magical map mirrors will work on tiles, buildings and units.

Y-Mirror Symmetry

X- Mirror Symmetry

XY- Mirror Symmetry

2x Point Symmetry

4x Point Symmetry

Storytelling & Map-based Cutscene
Being a highly-requested feature, we've now added scripting functionalities for units! You can now command your units to perform attacks and movement. Additionally, we've also introduced the capability to script special effects directly on to map objects, so you can sprinkle in a little zhuzh and pizzazz onto the battlefield.

We've also made significant strides in dialogue options. Our multiple-choice dialogue system now enables branched scripts, helping you deliver a more personalized narrative journey.

For those who enjoy story-driven experiences, you'll be pleased to know that we've also added story-only maps. This means you can now enjoy non-combat stories, which you’ll see utilised in our own campaigns where you can interact with characters and objects.

Weather and daytime visuals can now be altered on the fly, primarily for storytelling purposes, be it a skirmish in the sun or a raid during a stormy night.

Lastly, we've introduced a screenshake feature for those scenes that call for a little wibble wobble.

Wang Tilesets
Why is it called that? It’s named after mathematician, Hao Wang, who coined the term to describe tile arrangements that had matching edges without breaks in their pattern. For Wargroove 2 we looked holistically at all of the creation tool feedback and felt Wang tilesets were the answer.

One of the largest bits of feedback that we got from our fine map-making community is that the original Wargroove tileset felt limited due to the kind of tiles that could be placed next to one another. To solve this issue we extended the complexity of the tileset and made it from a partial Wang tileset into a complete Wang tilest.

Sounds fancy you say, but what brings this to the table for us map makers? Well glad you asked: In short, way more flexibility. You can now place nearly any combination of tiles against each other without breaking the map:
Want to have a stretch of islands connected via beaches that the player can walk over? Easy.

Have roads that are broader than 1 tile? No problem.

Walls that can be combined into whole structures.? Now possible.

Deep Sea that touches the coast? Sure thing.

This feature is hard to describe as it is a very technical change but the result is super obvious once you have started making maps. You should now hit nearly no limits on how tiles can be placed.

Other Cool Additions
We want to make map-making as simple as possible. So whether you made a misclick with your placement or simply want to try a different option, the undo and redo feature comes to your rescue.

One of the most significant updates in Wargroove 2 is the addition of scripted bonus objectives for maps - which you’ll also get to sink your teeth into in the campaign too! This new map creation feature not only introduces an extra layer of challenge to your gameplay, but also offers opportunities for additional rewards for your players.

If you’ve had the chance to play our Conquest Mode demo then you’ll know we’ve added some super cool items to bolster your units and give them that much-needed edge. In creator mode, units can now hold items, adding an element of strategy and offering diverse possibilities for gameplay. Similarly, maps can also have items, helping encourage player exploration and even tempting them to overextend themselves…

We've also introduced a new feature that allows you to spawn units inside travel boats or wagons via script. This gives you more control over units' deployment and increases the strategic depth of your maps.

And finally, our new toolset also brings with it three new tilesets: cut forest, abyss, and abyss bridge, and we can’t wait to see what kind of creative things you do with them!

Before we sign off, we want to give a shout out to all the closed beta testers who’ve been helping us refine the custom content tools for this game. Having seasoned community members, who love to create and share has empowered us to deliver the best version of these tools, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

Until next time!

Simon and the Robotality team

New Key Art Reveal

Hi everyone!

Today we’re sharing a mini blog update to reveal our fantastic new key art for Wargroove 2!

[h2]Demo Extension[/h2]
To celebrate, we’re also extending the Steam Next Fest demo for 48 hours. That means you have until 6pm BST on Wednesday 28th June to download the demo, and play the updated Conquest mode and Multiplayer maps.

[h2]Key Art[/h2]
This time we’ve teamed up with Vancouver-based artist, Justin Chan, to bring the Saffron Isles to life. A BIG thank you to Justin for creating this beautiful artwork.

The key art sees the return of Starbound’s Nuru, everyone’s best boy Caesar, notorious fire-starter Nadia, as well as Wulfar in his all-new pirate get-up. Look at that hammer upgrade!

You might also spot some new unit types in the background too. More details on these later!

We hope you’ve been enjoying playing Wargroove 2 in Steam Next Fest. If you did get a chance to try the demo, do make sure to let us know your thoughts and feelings in the feedback thread! Rest assured that even if we don't have time to reply to every comment, we are reading all of them.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

For those who ask in the forums - hey, why don't you just leave the demo live forever?

The development team use demo events to review your feedback, and implement changes based off of this. Sometimes even small balancing changes can make a pretty big difference to a strategy game, and completely change the feel of a given unit, Commander or map. By removing demos and replacing them with shiny new QA'ed and localised builds once we're ready for more feedback, we can give you the best possible experience, get accurate build version feedback, and ultimately show off a snapshot that also better reflects the final release.

Enjoy, folks!

Steam Next Fest Developer Q&A - Demo Livestream

In celebration of Steam Next Fest live right now until Monday 26th June, please join us for a stream of Wargroove 2, where members of Robotality and Chucklefish will be showing off Conquest mode, talking through changes coming to the sequel and answering your burning questions.

If you can't wait, the demo is available now for you to play yourself!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1346020/Wargroove_2/

Enjoy!