Since our launch on September 12, 2017, Tooth and Tail has seen over 100,000 copies sold, a resilient competitive community, 16 major patches with bug fixes, balance changes, and feature additions, numerous award nominations, and a growing mod community.
Looking to the future, we know we have some challenges ahead of us. Our player community is still very active via our discord channel, but the simultaneous Steam player count isn't actively growing. We still have a number of major bugs on the PS4 version. And the Story Mode content is still receiving complaints about inconsistent difficulty scaling. Let's take a quick look at the story so far and then figure out where to go from here!
Dont forget, you can follow development via our
public roadmap or
say hi to the devs in Discord!
Here's a recap of major developments and accomplishments since launch:
Launch Day
Season One
(WARNING, strong language in this video)
- Total Biscuit and Artosis develop a rivalry, Artosis cleans up. Total Biscuit gets his vs Jesse Cox.
- Our largest community tournament has 40 entrants and is won by ChipFromSpace.
- Tooth and Tail launches in Chinese and Korean, and later adds Spanish, German, and Italian. Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, and Turkish are in progress.
- Community members Glyde, BestTeaMaker, and Delthius show up to help us out as we demo the game at TwitchCon in Long Beach
End of Year
Let's just show off the 2017 nomination list:
2018 Independent Games Festival - Finalist: Excellence in Narrative, Honorable Mention: Visual Art, Audio
IGN - Nominee:
2017 Best Strategy Game The Game Awards - Nominee: 2017 Best Strategy Game
PCGamer - Nominee:
2017 Best Strategy Game PC Master Race - Nominee: 2017 Best Strategy Game
Hardcore Gamer - Nominee: 2017 Best Strategy Game
Total Biscuit -
Top Ten Games of the Year - #8Season Two
We launched Ranked Season 2 on December 19th with an MMR system closer to traditional Ranked ladders. Other major developments:
- The Tooth and Tail Official Soundtrack launched on CD and Vinyl (also available digitally directly from Austin Wintory or on Steam
- We launched GOG/Steam Crossplay, which is powering development of PS4 to PC crossplay, and hopefully more platforms to come!
- We've been featured in four major Steam sales (Winter, Midweek Madness, Lunar New Year, and an IGF nominee sale), a Chrono.gg sale headlined by Total Biscuit, and one major sale on PS4 (Outside is Over-Rated), bolstering our player community. You can bet that there will be more to come!
- Campfires, new tiles sets, and a revamped world generation algorithm were added to ranked and unranked play.
- Story Mode was completely rebalanced to bring it in line with current multiplayer balance.
- ToothAndTailTV, a fan-run channel, casts a massive North America vs Europe tournament, which culminates in a final game matchup of the titans, ChipFromSpace [NA] vs ArbuzBudesh [EU]
What's Next?
With Tooth and Tail starting to enter its "long tail" life cycle, we're taking a broad approach to keeping a healthy player community.
CrossplayWe're finally moving towards combining our PS4 and PC communities via crossplay, powered by GOG Galaxy. This means that anytime there is a sale on any platform, the increased player count will benefit all platforms.
Mod Support
Our latest patch (1.1.4: Eat Crow) was largely inspired by a balance mod that our player community put together. I hope that our community can continue to help us balance the game, as well as create and test new features, including new units.
In fact, a new Hedgehog unit is currently being developed and tested by community members. All of Tooth and Tail's assets are in human readable XML files and PNGs, so adding new stuff or modifying existing units is accessible to everyone.
Community Tournaments and Games via our Discord Channel
We have possibly the most tricked out Discord channel in gaming, due to the efforts of our community, lead by community manager, Brian Franco (mastastealth). The short list of Discord features:
- Pocketbot (a Discord bot to help the community learn about the game and keep the server in order)
- Automated weekly PB Cup tournaments
- Support for player-run tournaments
- ReplayUltima (replay analyzer)
- In development is Pocket World, another Discord integrated tool that will allow players to fight for the four in-game factions simply by playing the game. Players will take and lose territory for their team as they play.
New PlatformsStill nothing to announce, but yes, we're investigating new platforms for Tooth and Tail. Stay tuned.
New Feature -- Leaderboards and Standard Seeds in Story ModeThe Story Mode balance still needs quite a bit of work, and I'm determined to make the campaign be something that garners universal praise -- it's very close, but with a few things that can just ruin the experience for some people. So I plan to rebalance things again, and offer the ability to play each map on a "standard" -- and fair -- seed. I hope to add leaderboards to the standard seeds as well.
BalanceYou all know that I pay a lot of attention to the game's balance and I like to tweak it. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the weird. Expect this to continue.
A short history of the patches and their notable changes:
- 1.0.2: Howling Nerf -- Single Player Changes, Bug Fixes
- 1.0.3: Kasha So Sad -- Reduced Landmine range, Kasha nerf, Wolf re-stim removed
- 1.0.4: Butterbomb -- Campfires, tile sets added to multiplayer, Boar bomb added, boar slow, toads get structure crit, barbed wire redesign, lizard range 1, snakes can't hit structures, owl bomb removed, fox hp mega-nerfed, warren health scales by tier
- 1.0.5: Chicken Mole -- Flag customization, Editor Preview, Discord Status
- 1.0.6: Lizard Love -- Tier 3 build time increased, lizard buff, boar no longer slow
- 1.0.7: 鼹鼠 두더지 MOLE -- Chinese and Korean added, focus fire improvements, lizards range 2, another mole revamp, major chameleon buff
- 1.0.8: Nibbles and Tweaks -- Starting Farms always adjacent, major boar buff, pigeon AI changes
- 1.1.0: ('Tis the) Season 2 -- Ladder reset, unit and player stats added, MMR, Map Fairness
- 1.1.1: GOG Crossplay -- Crossplay, Tier 2 Artillery with scatter shot, Fox rooting, Landmine vision, Tier 3 build time increased, Warren health returned to 50
- 1.1.2: Snek House -- Snakes can poison structures again, Artillery returned to tier 3
- 1.1.3: Diamonds are a Lizard's Best Friend -- Single player rebalanced to fit Multiplayer stats, Burrowing to Allied bases, lizards range slightly reduced, MG nerf
- 1.1.4: Eat Crow -- Swift reduced to 1.75x speed, toad redesigned, boar given semi-agile, artillery range increased to 10
What do you want to see?
So what do you want to see out of Tooth and Tail in the months to come? What was your favorite balance patch? What kind of mods would you like to see? Let me know in the comments!
