USC: Counterforce News

This article is a recap of what happened in 2022 for us at Firesquid, a young publisher of strategy games. Read about our exciting year!

We are an indie publisher focusing on games that include strategizing and thinking. Whether it is a grand strategy game, a city-builder, or any other game where the brain is the most important muscle. Our goal is to empower diverse teams and offer players games that make their eyes shine.



We started the year with the announcement of our first game Great Houses of Calderia, a modern generational Grand Strategy game set in the fantastic land of Calderia inspired by the Renaissance.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1812910/Great_Houses_of_Calderia/

We received a warm welcome from the strategy game community, especially on Twitter. Players seemed to be intrigued by the Crusader Kings III and Game of Thrones mix and joined our Discord server. We organized a few playtest sessions with our community in the following months. Players shared insightful feedback and we carefully listened.

In June, the game was selected and showcased at the PC Gaming Show in front of thousands of viewers with an exclusive gameplay trailer.

The day after was the beginning of the Steam Next Fest, where the game was showcased. We shared a new demo and had two live streams by the developers at Resistance Games. The reception was good and gained us thousands of wishlists.


In the Summer, Léa and Igor joined us as game testers for an internship where they could learn QA testing, and work on all our games. Thanks to their hard work and passion, they helped the teams tremendously.


At the same time, we were working on another big project: TactiCon. TactiCon is a love letter to strategy games of all kinds. With our partners Hooded Horse, we wanted to celebrate this genre that’s so close to our hearts.



TactiCon is a five-day Steam festival showcasing a carefully curated list of exciting upcoming and recently released or updated strategy and tactics games across a number of different subgenres (grand strategy, 4X, RTS, turn-based tactics, and similar). It also features a series of unique talks, panels, interviews, and let’s plays given by experts from the genre in addition to showcasing the games themselves in a dedicated sale. The event is covered by streamers and the media alike and hosted as a weekend sale on Steam.

TactiCon Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/TactiCon

In total, 116 games were featured with 48 demos, and 58 games on sale. Two dozen speakers took part in 9 panels around strategy games, with the videos available on Youtube. The Steam page received +2.1M unique impressions and +1.5M unique visitors and a significant wishlists (among 62 respondents) and sales boost for the games participating.



In parallel, to take advantage of the TactiCon momentum, we announced our second game, USC: Counterforce. USC is a turn-based squad tactics game inspired by XCOM, Space Hulk and Aliens, featuring in-depth skill & combat systems and multiple game modes. The game invites you to discover the truth behind the demise of colony MC83-A, and to protect Humankind from an ancient alien threat.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574870/USC_Counterforce/

We ran a first playtest session on the demo and new tutorial that was really promising. The developers, Angry Cat Studios, and us are eager to add new features and modes to the game. The community members will be able to test new exciting features in advance of its release.

We then prepared for December’s TurnBasedFest, a Steam strategy game event created by the turn-based community. USC: Counterforce participated with a demo including a new tutorial, new missions, and major visual changes.

We’ve been attending many events in 2022: Game Camp (Lille), Gamescom (Cologne), EGX Live (London), Game Connection (Paris). We plan of going to a few more in 2023, starting with the Game Developer Conference in March (San Francisco). We’d love to meet you there and listen to your pitch!

2023 is going to be very promising for us as a publisher. We will release our first games Great Houses of Calderia and USC: Counterforce, announce new partnerships, hopefully, have the second edition of TactiCon, and more!

This article is a recap of what happened in 2022 for us at Firesquid, a young publisher of strategy games. Read about our exciting year!

We are an indie publisher focusing on games that include strategizing and thinking. Whether it is a grand strategy game, a city-builder, or any other game where the brain is the most important muscle. Our goal is to empower diverse teams and offer players games that make their eyes shine.



We started the year with the announcement of our first game Great Houses of Calderia, a modern generational Grand Strategy game set in the fantastic land of Calderia inspired by the Renaissance.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1812910/Great_Houses_of_Calderia/

We received a warm welcome from the strategy game community, especially on Twitter. Players seemed to be intrigued by the Crusader Kings III and Game of Thrones mix and joined our Discord server. We organized a few playtest sessions with our community in the following months. Players shared insightful feedback and we carefully listened.

In June, the game was selected and showcased at the PC Gaming Show in front of thousands of viewers with an exclusive gameplay trailer.

The day after was the beginning of the Steam Next Fest, where the game was showcased. We shared a new demo and had two live streams by the developers at Resistance Games. The reception was good and gained us thousands of wishlists.


In the Summer, Léa and Igor joined us as game testers for an internship where they could learn QA testing, and work on all our games. Thanks to their hard work and passion, they helped the teams tremendously.


At the same time, we were working on another big project: TactiCon. TactiCon is a love letter to strategy games of all kinds. With our partners Hooded Horse, we wanted to celebrate this genre that’s so close to our hearts.

TactiCon is a five-day Steam festival showcasing a carefully curated list of exciting upcoming and recently released or updated strategy and tactics games across a number of different subgenres (grand strategy, 4X, RTS, turn-based tactics, and similar). It also features a series of unique talks, panels, interviews, and let’s plays given by experts from the genre in addition to showcasing the games themselves in a dedicated sale. The event is covered by streamers and the media alike and hosted as a weekend sale on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/TactiCon

In total, 116 games were featured with 48 demos, and 58 games on sale. Two dozen speakers took part in 9 panels around strategy games, with the videos available on Youtube. The Steam page received +2.1M unique impressions and +1.5M unique visitors and a significant wishlists (among 62 respondents) and sales boost for the games participating.



In parallel, to take advantage of the TactiCon momentum, we announced our second game, USC: Counterforce. USC is a turn-based squad tactics game inspired by XCOM, Space Hulk and Aliens, featuring in-depth skill & combat systems and multiple game modes. The game invites you to discover the truth behind the demise of colony MC83-A, and to protect Humankind from an ancient alien threat.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574870/USC_Counterforce/

We ran a first playtest session on the demo and new tutorial that was really promising. The developers, Angry Cat Studios, and us are eager to add new features and modes to the game. The community members will be able to test new exciting features in advance of its release.

We then prepared for December’s TurnBasedFest, a Steam strategy game event created by the turn-based community. USC: Counterforce participated with a demo including a new tutorial, new missions, and major visual changes.

We’ve been attending many events in 2022: Game Camp (Lille), Gamescom (Cologne), EGX Live (London), Game Connection (Paris). We plan of going to a few more in 2023, starting with the Game Developer Conference in March (San Francisco). We’d love to meet you there and listen to your pitch!

2023 is going to be very promising for us as a publisher. We will release our first games Great Houses of Calderia and USC: Counterforce, announce new partnerships, hopefully, have the second edition of TactiCon, and more!

[h3]Do you recognize the references in the following image?[/h3]

In this news, Aliza, lead programmer on USC: Counterforce, shares her love for the old-school games that impacted the development of the game.

This time, let’s see some of the good old games that greatly influenced USC: Counterforce. We always wanted to strike a good balance between a kind of “realism” and old-school, boardgame-like combat mechanics—and though this is generally true about almost all games in the genre, we aim to emphasize the game’s “tabletop feel” in many ways.



First of these is the completely top-down presentation (at least as far as the tactical map screen goes, since you can also follow your marines through their head cameras)—and with this comes an almost completely flat map, without elevations and multi-story buildings. After Ultimate Space Commando we were experimenting with bringing elevations to its sequel, but ultimately, we found that it didn’t work well with the “flagship” USC mechanics, and it didn’t do good for the dynamic of the game. We didn’t want to change that special feeling that comes with this presentation, a feeling that made games like Julian Gollop’s Laser Squad (1988-1992), Space Hulk (board game: 1989, PC: 1993), or Space Crusade (board game: 1990, Amiga/PC: 1992) so great.

Screenshot of a mission in USC: Counterforce

We played these games as children back in the early 90s, and they made a huge footprint in our lives. Equipping your squad with weapons, ammo, and armor to take on a mad scientist, defending your base, or fighting aliens in a jungle in Laser Squad was an experience second to none. You had Time Units to spend in each turn, carefully planning your movement and shots, consulting the scanner (minimap) to devise your tactics—and then being gunned down by a well-placed opportunity shot from the AI. You could destroy walls and obstacles, and it was important to be aware of your surroundings as you moved with your squad. Many choices with a comprehensible system behind them, forcing you to think, to make the best of each of your turns. If there was only one game to name as an influence for USC and USC: CF, it would be Laser Squad. We often tend to call squad- and turn-based games against aliens “UFO or X-Com-clones”, but really, those games only came after.

Laser Squad "Screenshot 11" - Killed the enemy droid, mobygames.com

Space Hulk and Space Crusade, both parts of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, are a little bit different kinds of beasts, but only on the surface. You have a squad of hardened Space Marines; you have a grid-based map of tight corridors, rooms, and doors you can open. The rules are simpler, and your choices are not so abundant, but you have to act almost perfectly in every situation to survive. Positioning of your units is key, as Line of Sight mechanics and other rules are very strict—these are board games, after all! And the atmosphere, the feeling of constant and imminent threat at every corner, while your Marines themselves are nothing short of a human war machine—really unique! When we look at the systems behind these games, we can see they differ a LOT from that of Laser Squad, but what they have in common makes them very fun, very engaging, and indeed very difficult games. Making something this engaging in 2022 is no small task—graphics and UX expectations may have evolved, but those in themselves don’t make a great tactical game! We can still learn a lot from games we played decades ago.

Images of Space Hulk and Space Crusade, the video games and board games from the 1990s

[h3]Did you enjoy this news? Let us know in the comments![/h3]

Join our Discord to chat with the developers of USC Counterforce: https://discord.gg/vsxD6n8P8J

The USC Counterforce team

[h2]Have a look at the changes since the first USC title![/h2]

The first game of the USC series is called Ultimate Space Commando and was released in 2015. The game is a turn-based, top-down view tactics game in which you control the crew of a stranded recon vessel in a "first contact war" for survival, featuring a detailed combat system with RPG elements, fully interactive randomized maps, unique weapons and gadgets, crafting, and custom multiplayer modes.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/341910/Ultimate_Space_Commando/
In the game, the portraits were mainly visible in the team management hub, and in missions at the top of the screen.

[h3]Portraits in Ultimate Space Commando:[/h3]


In the new game USC: Counterforce, many things evolved, going from the gameplay to the lore, passing by the graphics, UI, and aliens. The portraits changed for more recent designs.

[h3]New portraits in USC: Counterforce:[/h3]


The concept is the same as in the first game, you can easily see who each marine is, and create a diverse team. Our artist Veronica worked on all the marines of the game, have a look at some of them!

[h3]New portraits of the Space Commandos:[/h3]


In USC: Counterforce, creating a complementary team is key to success. You will have the choice between many Space Commandos to deal with the ferocious alien menace.

Would you like to see other changes from the first game to USC: Counterforce? Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/vsxD6n8P8J

The USC: Counterforce team

[h3]
A new demo of USC: Counterforce is available from the 8th to the 12th of December during TurnBasedFest.[/h3]

This new demo includes a few changes, improvements, and additions to the TactiCon demo of September.

[h3]What's new in this demo:[/h3]

• Rework on the tutorial
  
• Squad customization enable
  
• New difficulty options
  
• New mission available
  
• All portraits reworked
  

> Share your direct feedback on Steam, or on our Discord: https://discord.gg/vsxD6n8P8J
> And fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSejd0vvjUdxIi2j0OZnZlQJIErg7NVMRhWuuGECEbV-KzqFXQ/viewform?usp=sharing

We really hope you will like our demo and can't wait to read your feedback!

The USC Counterforce team