Broken Arrow News

Will you be anywhere around London between September 14th to 16th? Then you might want to mark this on your calendar.

Slitherine is coming to WASD, bringing two of its most anticipated real-time strategy games: Broken Arrow and Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance. You will have the chance to experience the games first hand, meet our staff and offer your valuable feedback.

Broken Arrow is the highly anticipated real-time strategy game pinning the United States against Russia in a fictional conflict set in the contemporary era.

At WASD you will get the chance to play the latest version of the game in an exciting single player mission.



Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance is a gritty RTS that puts you in the middle of the Future Wars between humanity and Legion's synthetic intelligent machine network.

You'll have the chance to play through a few missions from the early stages of the single-player campaign at WASD.



📅 WASD X IGN 2023

Date: 14th - 16th September 2023
Location: Truman Brewery London
More information on the games:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1604270/Broken_Arrow/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839950/Terminator_Dark_Fate__Defiance/

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since we gave news about Broken Arrow, but rest assured, the team has been working hard. 

You're probably wondering what the current development status is: the team is working on the version that will become the beta; this version of the game will also contain multiplayer, unlike the demo back in February. We want to provide a polished and refined experience from the get go, so currently we're doing a lot of internal testing, ironing out a few details and, obviously, putting together the server infrastructure to accomodate many thousands of players at the same time.

Communication wise, we decided to break silence by releasing this interview to Félix Habert, Creative Director at Steel Balalaika, who will talk of the design choices behind Broken Arrow. The interview is accompanied by new screenshots: they were previously released privately to Patreon members and those will be new to everyone else.

We're looking forward to a very heated autumn, there will be tons of Broken Arrow news coming, so stay tuned, and enjoy the interview.

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Steel Balalaika as a new team is working on their first new game. Could you tell us  why you decided to make Broken Arrow? How was that decision taken and why?

Félix Habert: Broken Arrow is born from our love of strategy games and Steel Balalaika from the dream to make our own game and make it our job instead of being simple consumers.

This is a dream of freedom: creative freedom, economic freedom, freedom to work when we want and not like assembly-line workers.

Of course, with freedom come responsibilities and “when we want” rapidly becomes “all the time” but we believe that our efforts will not be in vain and that they will be rewarded in the end. That’s why our motivation never failed and is even reinforced by the very positive feedback we have received after the Steam Next Fest's demo.



What are the goals you aim to accomplish with Broken Arrow?

Félix Habert: Our first goal is to make sure at 100% that we deliver the game in the end. It sounds unambitious but this is our first game as a team, which means we cannot afford a failure.

Our second goal is more ambitious: create a new reference.

World in Conflict released 16 years ago in 2007 is a big inspiration in terms of atmosphere for us. We have the feeling that no game since WiC has managed to reach that level of immersion without sacrificing the scale of the battle.

But World in Conflict's gameplay was too simplistic in our view with its limited number of units and clear counters. We wanted something different that would feel more like a wargame with a huge number of units with statistics inspired by their real-life characteristics and the gameplay adapted around this constraint and not the other way around.

Another downside of World in Conflict was that the size of the battlefield that was too small to make planes controllable. The size of our battlefield was dictated by the fact we wanted controllable aircrafts.

In summary Broken Arrow is this: a mix between World in Conflict and a wargame.



What has been the hardest obstacle while developing Broken Arrow so far?

Félix Habert: This is the first game of the studio so we started from nothing, everything has to be made so it’s not the kind of obstacle like a cliff that you can blow up with dynamite or avoid, it is rather a very long and smooth slope that you must continue to climb every day for multiple years.

Was there a specific feature you definitely wanted in Broken Arrow?

Félix Habert: There are definitely 3 main things we wanted:

1) We want to include all the most impressive military equipment and techniques in existance or that are being developed. The logic we follow is “if it’s cool, we want it!”.

So you name it: airdrop, helicopter heavy lift, swarms of cruise and ballistic missiles, heavy bombers, all types of bombs and missiles including nuclear, AC-130 gunships, A-10 making gun runs…

2) Customization of the equipment. We wanted players to select which missiles and bombs they want for their planes, then we extended the principle to all units. Vehicles have armor upgrades, different weapon packages, infantry weapons can be swapped.

3) Give tools to the players to create and share content. Since we had to create everything from scratch including our own tools to create missions, we have decided to hit two birds with one stone and develop these tools as part of the game instead of a separate software. That way players will be able to create their own scenarios with dialogues, music, cinematics etc.



Once the game is released, do you envision expanding the game with new factions, maps and campaigns?

Félix Habert: Yes, of course! We have started with USA and Russia because they are the most documented armies providing obvious opponents for the game but we intend to add more factions to the game.

We also intend to add new maps with new biomes and new solo campaigns.

We also intend to develop new game mechanics and provide more tools for the players like the ability to create their own campaigns.

Welcome back to another Dev Blog for Broken Arrow.

This time we’re going to focus a bit on what the team has been working on recently. Steel Balalaika is currently hard at work on implementing new units and allowing for various degrees of cosmetic customization to them. Plus, you can now automatize things such as flares.

In the meantime, work is also continuing towards preparing a build for the multiplayer beta. As usual, stay tuned, and enjoy the read.

Customize the appearance of your units

A new type of customization is available in the game. Grab your favorite brush and a big paint can because you will be able to customize the livery of your units.
We’ve been teasing that for quite some time now by showing you vehicles with different color patterns in our screenshots and it is now fully functional: the appearance of your vehicle will be memorized in the deck and will be visible by other players in multiplayer.

More units added to the game

The demo contained around 160 units accessible in the hangar. Some people thought that this would be the total amount of units that will be present at release. Far from it, this represents about only half of it. At release the game will contain more than 300 units.
For those who were disappointed not to be able to ogle the generous curves of the top tier American tanks we’re sorry but they were not ready at the time of the demo but now they are.
Meet the M1A2 SEPv3 with TUSK 2 upgrade and Trophy active protection system in action:





Quality of life improved, micromanagement reduced.
As announced we are making efforts to reduce the micromanagement required to play the game and let players who prefer to focus on planning do so by giving the possibility to let the AI manage things like flares and smoke dispensers for them.
There will still be the possibility to deactivate the automatic mode with a simple right click on the button to manually trigger the ability with a left click when you need it.

By popular demand, the Broken Arrow demo is back on Steam!

As one of the most downloaded demos in the Steam Next Fest, we were really happy to see so many of you try and play the demo. Unfortunately some of you were not able to play it during that week and we received so many requests to make it available again.
From today until March 20 the demo can once again be downloaded and played. Remember, you will be able to play it until Monday March 20 at 4 pm BST.

You can do so simply by visiting the Broken Arrow steam page and clicking on the Download demo green button.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1604270/Broken_Arrow/

What it contains

It is the same demo that was released a few weeks ago during the Steam Next Fest.
In the single mission included in the demo you will be tasked to infiltrate a platoon of U.S. Marines Force Recon to destroy critical coastal defenses on the Baltic shore.

Clearing the sky of enemy planes, and escorting their landing craft and hovercraft to the shore, waves of powerful M1A1 Abrams and armored vehicles can be unleashed to dominate the battlefield. The mission will see American troops fight block for block in intense close-quarter infantry battles against airdropped enemy paratroopers. Forces can be resupplied with heavy-lift helicopters from a carrier group offshore. Prospective commanders need to take care and repel the assault of a full tank company with the combined arms help of helicopters and planes.

A number of major features are not yet in the current build. You cannot presently play as Russia, there is no Editor, there is a very limited selection of available troops, no customisation of units or deck building.

In addition, there are some features which are not final:
- Optimisation is far from complete
- Not all visuals and audio effects are final
- Unit balances will be refined as the game enters beta

We addressed all the feedback we received during the Steam Next Fest in this post.

The team is hard at work on the game, we expect to be back with news soon, so please stay tuned and have fun with the demo.

First off, we wanted to thank everyone who managed to download and play the demo last week!

It’s been a big success for us. The development team was overjoyed to see so many people play and have fun with the demo. Secondly, it allowed us to gather a lot of feedback that will be used to make the game better.

Today we wanted to give you some insight on our takeaway points from the demo and on what our next steps will be.

The overwhelming majority of people who tried the demo and offered their opinion, whether on discord, Steam, or through our survey, really enjoyed the mission. That isn’t to say that it’s perfect as it is. There are several areas that need improvement.

Performance

There were widespread performance issues. We were aware of it and it was what we were expecting. As we had warned, the game needs to be optimized, and it is something we will work on closer to the release. It is very important for us to greatly improve this area.

Stability

Similarly with performance, there were players who experienced crashes. Unfortunately it is unavoidable at this stage of development, as the game hasn’t gone into beta yet. In the next few months the team will focus on making the game a lot more stable than it currently is (more details below).

Missing Units

Some key units were still missing in the demo, as they’re being worked on. Also, in the demo you couldn’t choose your own units, the units at your disposal were forced on you. That will be different in the final game.

Difficulty and accessibility

Some players found the mission rather hard. It generally comes from 3 main problems:

• They didn’t find the reinforcement menu and tried to play the entire mission with the units present at start.
  
• They didn’t find how to resupply units resulting in very high losses.
  
• They didn’t try to put more than one infantry unit in a transport. Paying for a helicopter that can carry 30 persons to bring 4 soldiers on the battlefield is very inefficient.
  

In the final game all those things will be explained and taught gradually. The team wanted to test as many features as they could, even at the risk of them being a bit overwhelming. The game at launch will contain tutorial missions and a gradual learning curve. Also, there will be different difficulty levels.

The game felt too micro intensive at times

• Countermeasures like flares and smoke had to be deployed manually. In the final game a mode for automatic countermeasures will be available.
  
• The team will work on ergonomic improvements like the option to trigger sprint with a double right click for infantry.
  
• Some quality of life tools are still missing. For instance, a tool to display the line of sight of units as well as the range of their weapons at 360°.
  

Destructible elements on the map

Some players noticed that some elements on the map were not destructible. Don’t worry, we plan to greatly expand the number of destructible elements.

Localisations

The demo was only available in English, but the game at launch will be available in a number of foreign languages. We will post the list of localisation languages at a later date.

Battle chatter

Most players thought the unit barks were cool, but some players thought they would be a bit too spammy and repetitive. We agree with that and the devs are working towards increasing the delay between lines and to avoid repetitiveness.

As you can see, the game is shaping up and getting there, but the devs are going to need a bit more time. But for now, we have some exciting news.

Multiplayer Beta coming in the Spring

In the next few months we plan to start testing multiplayer! Everyone will be welcome to apply. We are looking forward to it. We envision multiplayer to be a big part of the Broken Arrow experience, and we’ll need all the feedback we can get in order to make it as fun as we can. So, if you weren’t able to play the demo, don’t worry, you will have other chances to try the game in the near future.