Be Excellent To Each Other

We've been discussing this in the switch thread (since it seems so advance war-ry) , but since it comes out on all platforms (eventually on ps4), and features cross play, an apart thread might be fun, also to make some gaming bezzie appoitments.. I'll be buying it tomorrow

Trailer

https://twitter.com/WargrooveGame/statu ... 2599841793

We’re SO excited that Wargroove is arriving on PC, Switch and Xbox One on February 1st! (PS4 soon)

You can even pre-purchase & pre-download on #NintendoSwitch today! 🎉

🎥 Watch the Cinematic Trailer: https://t.co/mpfQEFQ7cb

📝 Dev Blog: https://t.co/rbScYgDUKc pic.twitter.com/fhU8xAmKy5

— ⚔️ Wargroove (@WargrooveGame) January 23, 2019

wiki/blog: https://wargroove.com/blog/


Reviews
http://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/swi ... /wargroove (postive)
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019 ... e-classics (fun , but missing a spark)

Is this the one with asynchronous multiplayer, Naked War style?

No, I think it's turn based.

Yes it has asynchronous multiplayer

@grim. Naked war was turn based too.

Yeah, but you both went at the same time.

In Naked War?

You emailed the turns to each other.

I would definitely be interested in this then.

Huh, I'm completely misremembering then. I thought you made your plans and then both sides moved at once, like in Frozen Synapse. I do remember the emailing bit though, and that they decided to charge you for it

[edit] Misremembering, not remembering

Frozen synapse has a sequel now, we should probably play that.

If you were issuing the challenge you got to the make the first move, and then your client sent your move to the server, which then generated the email to the person you sent the challenge to.

That person would then get an email (from the Naked War server, not from you), and opening the email launched the game and played the move out to them. (You could also just log into the Naked War site and play the turn from there, which is what I did as I'd generally have multiple games on the go at once and they all appeared in a nice list on my player profile page.)

Once the turn had been replayed, control was then handed over to the player, they then got to plan out their move and execute it, which sent the turn to the Naked War server, which sent the email to the originating player, who then got to see the move when they opened the email, and so on.

It was an elegant system and it worked very well, although some people did take days to send their turns back sometimes.

As for the cost to play, you 'bought' challenges, so you only paid to issue a challenge to someone else. IIRC the cost was very reasonable, and there were all sorts of ways to get free challenges, there were free community games, and all sorts. I'm sure all the details are still in the Naked War thread here.

I thought it was an absolutely fantastic game, and played it loads. I still have my signed plaque at home as the second player in the world to reach the top rank.

Who beat you?

A guy called zzHari, but he got into the game quite a bit before me (beta days I believe).

He was a fucking good player, some of the games me and him had were epic (after I defected to the Red Team), IIRC we finished about level pegging on wins and losses with each other.

The website is still online, you can see him at #1 and me at #2.

The guy at #3 (Jimmymac) I knew from fruit machine emulation and invited him to the game, we often had five games on the go simultaneously. He came over to the IOM on business once and we went out for a very boozy night in Douglas - nice chap.

http://www.zee-3.com/nakedwar/resources/top_brass.php

Point is I love turn-based strategy games so I'd totally be up for some of this Wargroove if it's any good as a multiplayer.

He was certainly playing when I was playing the beta.

I never played beyond the beta.

I remember falling out with it a bit when a few bad bugs didn't get fixed, I lost many games to bugs and TBH I got the impression that John Pickford couldn't get on top of them all. Also, it felt shitty to win to the other player falling foul of a bug, no satisfaction in that.

(Folks like me, Zzhari and Jimmymac got ferociously good at the game, so when we planned and executed a move and it didn't play out EXACTLY as per the plan, it could easily cost a game. I remember one fucking AMAZING move I played against Jimmymac on one of the most complex maps, which according to the planner would work, then when I executed it one my units glitched on a bit of scenery, and it fucked the entire move as my other units got caught behind it, boom, game lost, I nearly threw my fucking PC out of the window.)

One absolutely bizarre one was a turn playing out differently on two different PCs. (I tried it more than once and the behaviour was repeatable, as you could replay the turn as many times as you liked.) That one properly just had him scratching his head.

Shame really as fundamentally it's a truly superb game.

And yet you never played mine. How rude!

It looks like they only made three releases after the beta period ended, and only for three months.

Yes I think it was obvious by then it wasn't going to be paying the bills, and IIRC they took on some freelance work to put bread on the table, stating they intended to get back to updating Naked War as and when they could, but that never happened

Played first few games....

+ like the characters.. they are funnily done... a frankenstein like boss you encounter in mission 3.. (polygon has an article on this too https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/30/18202 ... 4-xbox-one)

+ size of the screen is ncie
+ some interesting rule changes... like e.g. pikeman making each other stronger when close to each other (think they took this from either final fantasy tactics or ogre wars), and also structure are handled slightly different..
+ level editor looks very promising always something to do...

- general presentation is just a bit sharewhare-y at times
- cursor is sometimes hard t find..... interface could be bit more contrasting with other colours..

i wonder how strong the AI is, saw some weird moves but that just might be the beginning

still lots to love...

Pretty sure that concept is a few hundred years older than either of those games.

oh and apparently a naked war-games coming for iOS... in 2015... http://www.zee-3.com/nakedwar_ios/

I am going to buy Wargroove, it is only £16 on Steam and it has FULL CROSSPLAY across all platforms.

Looking forward to battling you, sir..

This looks like a garbage pail kid card.

A really, really sexy one.

A sexy... kid?

Design a level competition ! http://www.nintendolife.com/competition ... ndo_switch

I almost thought you had repaired it.

I was playing this all last night, I turned the music off and put Spotify on (not that the music is bad, but if you're playing for hours it can get rather repetitive), and enjoyed a thoroughly charming gaming experience.

One thing that is very different to Naked War, and makes it quite a bit easier, is you move your units one at a time, whereas in Naked War you had to pre-plan your entire turn for four units, divided up into ten phases, and then when you pressed EXECUTE that was it, you couldn't go back and change anything. It was very easy to block your own units and if you did that, anything that was queued up behind it would fail, which would bollocks up the whole turn. There's no risk of that here because you move one unit at a time.

Haven't tried the multiplayer yet, I'm still not sure how the asynchronous stuff works, i.e. Do both players have to be online and wait for the other player to do their turn, or do you send your turn to the other player, Naked War style, and then wait for the turn to come back from your opponent? It's not actually clear from the reviews I've seen.

That was Naked War's USP. They made a big deal about it.

Ahhh right I didn't particularly twig onto that. It was a genius system, and really gave me a profound sense of satisfaction when I watched as many as 40 individually planned actions all play out perfectly alongside each other.

Well, there were only ever 4 things happening at once, one per each of the 4 units, but with 10 phases per turn it was a potential maximum of 10 x 4 = 40.

Naked War was such a bloody good game. Being able to send a little audio clip with your turn was a genius touch too, and one that me and a few of the people I played at utilised from time to time.

Some weird bugs in arcade mode... cursor seemingly moving itself.. sound suddenly silent... but it got aan update yesterday. Let's see if that helps

edit: sorry, spelling mistakes

I do hate it when things mooi g gy themselves.

I'm not sure about this game.

I find the movement system incredibly simplistic and limiting, and yet annoyingly fiddly too, when compared to Naked War.

The levels are starting to feel more like puzzles rather than organic battles where awesome tactics can be brought to bear, and despite several hours play it's not really clicked with me.

Maybe I was just spoiled by Naked War all these years ago, but this feels like a step back in all honesty.

This bit makes me think of this review of the game :

https://kotaku.com/wargroove-the-kotaku ... 1832265678

This is still on my 'to buy' list and I'm sure I will get it but I just dont have the time right now

Yeah that pretty much nails it, very good review.

My playtime is 7 hours so it's not like I haven't given it a chance. In fact, that review is so good I won't even bother listing anything else in terms of criticisms as she's absolutely bang on.

I finished a grindy mission last night, as she says in her review, there's just a sense of being glad it's over with. Everything feels like a war of attrition.

There's no scope whatsoever for the genuius masterpiece turns that Naked War lets the player conjure up, the absolute SHOCK AND AWE turns that the mechanics of the game are designed to facilitate and encourage, and the move one unit at a time mechanic in Wargroove feels woefully limiting compared to the complexity and SATISFYING design of Naked War's simultaneous movement system.

Also, playing against a soulless AI is quite boring compared to jousting against a human opponent. (And I can't see it getting much more exciting playing in multiplayer anyway, the mechanics just aren't there IMO.)

TBH I can't imagine I'll be playing this one again. (I just went back to playing Hearthstone last night.)

Indeed a good review... wondering how I 'l find it after somemore campaign maps... still arcade mode is fun...


and people are (of course) creating the advance wars maps in Wargroove http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/0 ... ps_in-game

Apparently here is something about how the multiplayer works asynchronously https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4tMakHQgk0