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[ArKFallen]

[I have too much to say for sensible formatting so I threw in some color for TL;DR. Compliments, Gameplay Issue, and Suggestion. The colors are the actual point, new paragraphs are new points.]

I really like the tabletop art style, really helps set it apart from other hexagonal games like Wesnoth and People's Tactics. The scenery is nice. On my first run on Early Game (or whichever is the first with a Zombie Duke) the RNG blessed me with a beautiful hill zone in the north (the end of it was +2 height) with a little strip of land in the middle and swamps all around. The forest in the Advanced Game is extremely impressive and unfortunately very difficult to navigate as even small hills block sight to paths and many paths are hidden by trees unless you literally trek hex by hex with your cursor (which is why I make the following suggestion).

A nice feature for the full game's tactical map would be a button to toggle visibility for the hex-grid, with options for not showing hexes that are impassable and/or for showing height numbers in hex, would be a god-send for tactical navigation in forests and other visibly difficult places (ie larger hill ranges if implemented). The current in-game alternative is to mouse over every invisible hex with a move order to see what places you can stand.The less observant/meticulous will likely be surprised by the little cliffs/high terrain hidden by the forest.

Question on the AI's FoW: they need to see a BattleBro or one of their friendlies that has seen one (I think). How far does this go? If the furthest zombie out sees you do all of his buddies that can see him now know where you are? What happens with AI that only see one of the second hand sources (ie can only see zombie's buddy but not the zombie)? When does this knowledge update to the other AI (from 1st hand source to 2nd and so on)?
I ask because this is one of the first games I've seen do AI FoW and still manage for AI to semi-function as a group.

Spoiler: Recount First Victory in Advanced Combat (click to show/hide)

This was the game I first figured out how to change equipment so every Bro went in with a second weapon set. My spearmen went in with an extra sword and shield. The billhook guy was sporting a spear and shield instead, and every (cross)bowman had 3 bags full .

12 buddies went in together, 5 came out as Brothers.

We started in the forest and our first action was to run south, out of it. 1 bowman, a spearman, and a swordsman were at the edge when a withered vampire appears beside the bowman. The bowman and vampire tango 2 rounds until the spearman stakes him, while the others handily end some werewolves. Less than a round fully out of the forest another vampire appears beside a different bowman and is killed. Another round, everyone is in a clearing no one near a forest, and another vampire appears. This one is beside the crossbowman and I send 1 brother toward him and have the rest fend off a pack of Lycans. The crossbowman is badly hurt and draws his side arms so the vamp teleports to and insta-kills the armored brother who was supposed to be reinforcements. The vampire lays waste to all but one bowman and 2 slightly armored brothers as the lycans are hastily cleaned up . The vampire comes to the last bowman who now has no armor, is almost dead, and has a billhook drawn. The vampire attacks and misses the bowman while reinforcements are on the way. The last bowman proceeds to tear him apart with that billhook ending that vampire menace.
The rest of the scenario was pretty fun in a tense way, with every Brother's movement counting. With 2 Brothers' assistance that bowman survived the rest of the engagement, even killing 4-5 armored foes (lycans and skeleton guards).
Some moments were riskier than others. While sweeping the south east the last vampire appears causing the 2 Brothers and Bowman to have a 5 round stand-off while trapped in by trees with no hope of reinforcements. The bloodsucker would kite from higher ground until I set up for a billhook maneuver.

Even unfinished the demo is very fun, the only thing missing is long term re-playability. Which you all seem to be moving to/already on.

[Rap]

Thanks for the comprehensive feedback!

I quite like your suggestion of adding a toggeable overlay that shows which tiles can be moved on and which are impassable. We should add this. In the meantime, rotating the map using the CTRL key helps with navigation especially around large hills.

You're right, enemies need to see a Battle Brother or see an ally with which to share information about Battle Brother positions in order to engage them. This information may be outdated, though, and enemies may move towards positions where a Battle Brother has last been seen if they don't see an actual one. There is no hard limit to distance or the number of sources between which information is propagated, i.e. second-hand sources and further work the same, only their information has an increasing likelyhood of being outdated. Also, the AI keeps the memory of Battle Brothers they haven't seen for only 5 turns currently, which means that after 5 turns the information also isn't propagated further. Knowledge is updated for an enemy whenever it spots an ally of his during his turn.

Another source of information is being attacked; when being shot at with arrows from the FoW, the Battle Brother shooting is revealed to the AI being shot at and nearby friendlies - this works the same for the player, though.

[ArKFallen]

In the meantime, rotating the map using the CTRL key helps with navigation especially around large hills.

I didn't realize the South/North screen button had a keybinding (how unobservant of me). That button is awesome. Until I watched some early dev commentary videos I didn't realize what the little 0-3 yellow bar that appears in tile info meant so I was using the up/down level keys to manually count the levels

Knowledge is updated for an enemy whenever it spots an ally of his during his turn.

So an enemy with a larger Line of Sight could inform more allies of his than one with less. Very nice. In battles with different enemy types that also have different LoS on the same side it would give a big incentive to wipe out the long LoS unit first. I really like the options for enemies this opens up. It allows stealthiness (when lucky) and causes enemy waves to be staggered instead of 'instant dog-pile' because they may have already had their turn when their ally informs them of the Brother.

Post-release updates/DLC with possible factions that use any of the mechanics in different ways will likely be popular and could be fun to design. (As ridiculous as it is the previous sentence was actually made to give the below Case a Point)

Spoiler: Case in Point (click to show/hide)

You could have Watchers (larger LoS + lower intiative) and Thugs (lower LoS + Tough/Strong) defending bases of some sort (the fluff could be nearly anything, IE master and their cave/dark adapted creatures, mage and golems/animate statues). So the Thugs need to be 'directed' by the Watchers. Or the reverse for offense with some Scouts (larger LoS + high initiative + weak), Thugs, and a Commander (larger LoS + lower initiative + strong)(for directing after the death of the Scouts). And the larger/lower stats could be purely relative to the faction or to base humans.
And these are just 2 "scenarios" based purely on the AI FoW system. Doubtless it would never be that neat for them or you because of the randomization (a good thing).

Another source of information is being attacked; when being shot at with arrows from the FoW, the Battle Brother shooting is revealed to the AI being shot at and nearby friendlies - this works the same for the player, though.

I noticed this when some skeleton bowmen peppered my Brothers from the foliage, quite a fun shock.

I often get no terrain details when mousing over terrain that gives you the 'Hidden' status. Kind of irritating when trying to see what is and isn't swamp (for AP movement purposes) when some of those things are clustered about. I also get no info outside of Fog of War but I assume that is a feature.

[Rap]

So an enemy with a larger Line of Sight could inform more allies of his than one with less. Very nice. In battles with different enemy types that also have different LoS on the same side it would give a big incentive to wipe out the long LoS unit first. I really like the options for enemies this opens up. It allows stealthiness (when lucky) and causes enemy waves to be staggered instead of 'instant dog-pile' because they may have already had their turn when their ally informs them of the Brother.

Post-release updates/DLC with possible factions that use any of the mechanics in different ways will likely be popular and could be fun to design.

Currently, all enemies have the same vision range of 6 tiles - the same as your Battle Brothers unless they wear heavy helmets. Status effects, like being blinded, may temporarily reduce vision in the future, and we'll have some new enemy types with more or less vision range to fit their role and character.

However, I don't really want to rely on vision as a primary mechanic for enemies (like your Watchers and Thugs example), or even as a primary way of differentation between enemy types. The problem is that AI vision is very intransparent to the player and not something that is intuitively understandable without specific UI hints. Already, I've seen people wonder about how the AI appears to be stupid when going where they're going, not realizing that the AI has limited vision as well and doesn't necessarily have the information the player has available. Contrast that with an ability like zombies turning killed opponents into new zombies, or ghouls devouring corpses to grow stronger. Those are intuitively understandable mechanics, quite transparent to the player even if no exact numbers are revealed.

I often get no terrain details when mousing over terrain that gives you the 'Hidden' status. Kind of irritating when trying to see what is and isn't swamp (for AP movement purposes) when some of those things are clustered about. I also get no info outside of Fog of War but I assume that is a feature.

Thanks for reporting this, I'll look into it. No info for tiles within the FoW is working as designed, but you should always be able to get terrain info on tiles that can hide entities within.

[Zangi]

Watching these Posts.  Will try out that demo thing later.

[Rap]

A quick update on how we're doing on Steam Greenlight: After 3 days we're already 43% of the way to the top 100. Still some way to go, but we're making good progress. Thanks to everyone who supported us thus far!

If you haven't voted for us yet, please consider supporting us at the Battle Brothers Greenlight Page and sharing the link.

[Rap]

Update time. Today we're talking quests in Battle Brothers.

Dev Blog #26: Mercenary Contracts and Greenlight Update

It’s been one week now since we launched on Greenlight, and what a ride it’s been! We’re now at 63% on the way to the top 100. Not too shabby for one week, but still a long way to go before being greenlit. Thank you all for your support so far!

If you haven’t voted for us already, please do so here:



Only with your help can we get the game on Steam, which would allow us to work on it full-time and make progress much faster. If you know others who might be interested in Battle Brothers, please do share the link!

So, that’s that. For now, let us take a look at contracts, which in Battle Brothers work much like quests do in other RPGs, and how they shape the game.

Mercenary Contracts
Contracts fulfill an important role in Battle Brothers. You’ll lead a band of mercenaries, after all, and contracts are what you do for work most of the time. Since the game has an open world, contracts are also important to give the player a sense of direction. You’ll be able to freely travel and explore the world at your pace, and you won’t have to take up any contracts as long as you can afford to pay and feed your men with the spoils you find. However, you should also never feel lost, not knowing what to do next; in a world torn up by war, there should be plenty of work available for a mercenary company.

Just as the worldmap and all the tactical battle maps are procedurally generated and will never look the same, so are contracts procedurally generated and don’t follow a scripted linear order. Importantly, though, contracts aren’t just random missions thrown at you. They are the result of what really is going on in the world; if a caravan travels on a long journey through dangerous lands, it will offer an escort contract. If a village is constantly being raided by bandits, it will offer a contract for protection. The bandits won’t be spawned just for the duration of the contract and to entertain the player – they’ll really be raiding the village beforehand, and the contract being offered is a reaction to them. Defeating their raiding parties will really lower bandit activity for a while, and burning down their camp may end it completely.

It’s important for us that all contracts are embedded into our dynamic open world and allow the player to really make a change, to have a real impact on the world, and not just grind random missions one after the other. If you haven’t seen it already, this blog post explains in more detail our open world mechanics. At least for now, you’ll also only be able to accept one contract at a time – we want to avoid that feeling of having an endless list of quests which you just work through, not even remembering where you got it and why you’re doing it.



Contracts also need to offer enough variety and change to last a whole campaign, and not grow boring and repetitive after a while. Our contracts are generated from a variety of variables which hopefully will offer virtually endless combinations together with the different locations they take place at and opponents you fight. Contracts can vary from short time assignments, like escorting a person or caravan, hunting down a group of beasts, scouting an area or destroying an encampment, to long time assignments, like protecting a whole region for two weeks. Even changing a little thing like the payment modality could change how individual missions play out; if you’re promised 10 silver crowns for every orc head, you might want to take more risks to hunt down every last one as opposed to when you’re promised a flat sum for destroying the orc raiding party, no matter if a few orcs can get away.

It can be hard for procedurally generated contracts to compete with a linear campaign in terms of pacing and atmosphere. To help this, we will present each contract offer with a paragraph of story to set the mood. Contracts will never just be a few bare bulletpoints, a price and an accept button. Instead it will be villagers telling you of their ails, or a lord with a proposition.

If you have any questions or ideas for contracts we should include, let us know here or at our forums!

[wereboar]

His crossbow is loaded and he's pointing it at his buddy's foot while they're being distracted by a conversation.
*Smack!* -Go back to the boot camp you sloppy rookie!

[Jaysen]

Yeah, you can actually shoot your own Battle Brothers in tactical combat if you do not take care! Happened to me one more than one occasion admittedly
(all objects block or hamper line of sight with the chance of getting hit)

[Sharp]

Is it loaded? doesn't even look strung to me, still it's the thought that counts

[Neonivek]

I tried the first stage in the demo and so far so good. It needed some improvements, but I assume most of it has been rectified.

Such as movement spheres.

Oddly enough with the spear character I tried to attack from a square away and wondered why I couldn't for a second and then I was like "Ooooh spears are just like any other weapon in this". This isn't a problem, I am just saying my thoughts at the time.

I was also surprised not by the "Attack of Opportunity" when I tried to back away from an enemy, but the fact that it flat out stopped my movement. This isn't an issue I am just saying my thoughts at the time.

I bashed the enemy away from one unit, but I don't think it really helped any. It probably requires a better set up than I was using... Though I guess I could have set up a spear wall if I waited.

---

Oddly enough I stopped playing because I felt a bit intimidated because of how easy I noticed it was to have the fight go against me in just that practice fight (Just that one silly movement). But I'll see how it is when I try again.

When I say it isn't a problem I really do mean it. I don't know what feedback I give you is helpful... so I am just telling you my every thought and instinct I had playing it.

[Rap]

Oddly enough with the spear character I tried to attack from a square away and wondered why I couldn't for a second and then I was like "Ooooh spears are just like any other weapon in this".

Those spears aren't that long, though with the Spearwall skill they are unique in that you can prevent opponents from closing in to you. The Billhook, however, a two-handed weapon, really does have a range of two tiles and allows to attack from behind the front line like you had in mind, as well as to hook opponents and pull them towards you.

I was also surprised not by the "Attack of Opportunity" when I tried to back away from an enemy, but the fact that it flat out stopped my movement.

It only stops your movement if you get hit. Raising the shield using the Shieldwall skill, for example, makes it easier to get out of a Zone of Control.

I bashed the enemy away from one unit, but I don't think it really helped any. It probably requires a better set up than I was using... Though I guess I could have set up a spear wall if I waited.

It's mainly useful to improve positioning. Another way to get out of a Zone of Control is by just knocking the enemy away. The AI also uses it, for example, if you have a height advantage to knock you off your high ground and claim it for itself. In the Defend the Hill Scenario, it can be a critical skill to keep enemies off the top of the hill; if a character falls down 2 or more levels of height, they also take minor damage from the fall directly to hitpoints (ignoring armor).

Oddly enough I stopped playing because I felt a bit intimidated because of how easy I noticed it was to have the fight go against me in just that practice fight (Just that one silly movement). But I'll see how it is when I try again.

The demo can be hard at times. It's definately beatable, though, with a variety of different tactics.

When I say it isn't a problem I really do mean it. I don't know what feedback I give you is helpful... so I am just telling you my every thought and instinct I had playing it.

Of course, we appreciate any feedback. Please keep it coming! 

[Rap]

By popular request, we give an introduction to our AI this week.

Dev Blog #27: AI in Battle Brothers, Part 1

This week things get more technical as we shine a light on the Artifical Intelligence, or AI, that controls opponents in the game.

If you’ve played the later scenarios of the combat demo, you may have found the AI serviceable already. Once we have all the core mechanics of the game in place and things won’t change around all the time anymore, we’ll invest more work into the AI in order to have it actually stand out. Let’s find out how it works exactly.

Our goals
As we stated before, our goal is to have different enemies feel distinct to fight against. We don’t want enemies to differ merely in a few stats, such as having more or less hitpoints. There are two ways to achieve this, as we see it; the first one is having unique skills that give enemies tools to challenge the player in different ways, and that require the player to formulate different tactics to overcome. The second one is having enemies behave differently, as determined by their AI.

With the AI we take a simulationist approach, meaning that we try to tailor the behavior of enemies to simulate a behavior befitting what they are in the context of the game world.

Zombies, for example, have an intentionally gimped AI. They don’t care if they’re stuck in swamp, have a height disadvantage or are outnumbered. They’ll just charge into the nearest opponent and won’t even make use of the more specialized skills of their weapons. In other words, they’re stupid. By being this stupid, however, they also feel more unique an opponent and more like you would expect the typical zombie to behave. If you play your cards right, you can outsmart a group of zombies much larger than your group.

On the other hand there are skeletons, their undead relatives. We decided that skeletons should have more of a cold and efficient intelligence, governed by faded memories of long gone battles and military exercise. Skeletons do care about the terrain they are on and about height advantages. They also make full use of their equipment; they form a shieldwall if pelted with arrows from afar or if outnumbered, they use axes to split shields if they can not hit their opponents otherwise, they use their shields to knock down opponents from elevated positions to claim them for themselves, and they might even decide to hold a defensible position instead of charging into the fray.

What skeletons don’t do is lying in ambush or do long-winded flanking maneuvers. Such tactics, for us, don’t really fit the undead. Instead, it will be the living opponents who’ll employ them. Goblins, for example, will put great emphasis on setting up ambushes and doing hit-and-run tactics.


How it works
Battle Brothers has a utility-based AI with relative utility. I’ll explain what the hell that means below, but if you’re really interested in the technical details, I can recommend this great presentation from Kevin Dill and Dave Mark explaining the concept in detail.

Every type of enemy has a bunch of potential behaviors to choose from whenever it is his turn to act. As an example, let us consider this hypothetical scenario: We are a skeleton, armed with an axe and a shield, and face a Battle Brother who has his shield up.

For simplicity’s sake, we can choose between the following three behaviors:

• Doing a Chop attack to injure or kill our opponent
  
• Using Split Shield to get rid of our opponent’s shield
  
• Using Shieldwall for protection
  

So what behavior do we choose? We’ll look at each possible behavior to determine how much sense it makes to use it in this very situation, how useful it is to us, or in other words, how high its utility is. All these considerations need to be quantified so that we can compare between numbers. For the sake of this example, let us rate any behavior in our situation on a scale of 1 to 10. This number is our relative utility.

Do we do the chop attack?
The higher the chance to hit and the more damage we can do, the more we want to just attack. On the other hand, if our chances to score a hit are low, then we aren’t that enthusiastic about doing an attack. We have a low chance to hit our opponent here because his shield is up, so the utility score of an attack would be relatively low, let’s say 3.

Do we split our opponent’s shield in two?
The harder our opponent is to hit, the more we want to get rid of his shield. If his shield is poor or battered already, that’s even more reason to get it out of the way. On the other hand, if we have but a small hatchet and our opponent has a knightly shield, attempting to split his shield may be a waste of time. Because here our opponent has his shield up and makes it difficult to hit his body, the utility of destroying his shield and thereby increasing our chance to hit with following attacks is high, let’s say a 9.

Do we use shieldwall?
If we are at any kind of disadvantage, whether because of terrain or because we are outnumbered, we want to give ourselves more protection. Using shieldwall is helpful in our little duel, but we could just as well do another attack instead – we’ll give it an average score of 5.

In reality, there are a lot more considerations going on, of course, but this is the basic idea. As you probably already figured out, there isn’t just one single behavior that viably applies to our situation. In fact, often there isn’t even one behavior that can be said to be the best for a given situation.

After all possible behaviors have been considered and given a utility score like above, they’re entered into a pool. Everything with a utility score of 2 or lower is thrown out so that we don’t pick a behavior that really makes little to no sense in our situation. Then, we pick one by weighted random. Every behavior in the pool could be picked, but the higher the utility, the more likely it is to be picked. Think of throwing a dart on the pie chart below; it’s most likely to hit the Split Shield part, but you could hit any of the other two as well.

This way, we always have an element of unpredictability in how the AI behaves. The AI won’t always do the same in every situation, and it can on occasion surprise you. But it will attempt to do what are the most sensible things to do in the very specific situation it is in.


There is more?
Yes, quite a lot in fact. This part covered the basics and should give an idea on how the AI works on a basic level and why it doesn’t do the same thing all the time. In a possible later article we may look in more detail at specific parts of the AI and how they contribute to enemies that feel unique to fight against.

[Rap]

Let's talk music!

Dev Blog #28: Music in Battle Brothers

With our Steam Greenlight campaign still running and us busy working on the strategic worldmap, this week we’ll get some insight into how music is created for Battle Brothers and how it helps to shape the experience of playing the game.

We’ll give the floor to Dennis and Patrick, our talented musicians from Breakdown Epiphanies, who will give you a tour of the music in Battle Brothers in their own words and even reveal several brand new tracks for you to listen to. If you want to be always up to date regarding new tracks for Battle Brothers, you can also follow them on Soundcloud or Twitter. But for now, let’s listen in..


Introduction

Hi there! Today we, Dennis and Patrick from Breakdown Epiphanies, get the opportunity to talk about our musical background and give you a little insight on the music we’ve been writing for Battle Brothers. On top of that we’re happy to share some new tracks that offer a first impression of the games’ upcoming features like the strategic world map, the Orc faction and villages.

We have been making music together for more than ten years now, mostly in rock/hardcore bands but we always experimented with more electronic sounds and production on the side. The other thing we did a lot of since our childhood was playing video games. We share dear memories of some themes from games like Terranigma, Secret of Mana, Unreal or Shining Force.

Early this year we decided that it was time for a leap of faith, to put us out there and talk to game developers all around the web. Luckily, we ended up meeting the awesome guys from Overhype Studios who not only work on an incredibly promising game but also live (for the most part) in our hometown, Hamburg. Battle Brothers immediately struck a nerve with us due to its charming art style and its reminiscence of the old X-Com and Jagged Alliance games. So we stacked up on new digital instruments, orchestra- and scoring libraries, started learning about orchestration and began composing.

As Battle Brothers’ gameplay revolves mostly around desperate battles to the (perma-)death, the soundtrack has to convey a sense of danger and tension. So the general mood we aimed for was reasonably dark while still evoking a notion of adventure and exploration. The first thing we came up with ended up to be the main menu theme which already points in this general direction.


Worldmap

At the moment, the guys from Overhype are working overtime on the game’s strategic world map layer so we are happy to present our first track for this slice of gameplay. We really wanted to emphasize the feeling of exploration and discovery on this one. The player should immediately recognize this as a part of the game that has its own pacing and set of choices. For the sake of continuity the harp used in the menu theme plays a role in this one, too, starting out with a short, memorable cue that can be identified with changing screens to the world map.



We plan on having several tracks playing in this section of the game, so certain themes can be put out of or added to the rotation depending on the players progress, i.e. the music will become more dramatic and sombre as the threat of the “Greater Evil” conquering the lands becomes more imminent.


Tactical Combat

The music accompanying tactical combat has to be a totally different beast. Players will have to focus and concentrate on small decisions over a long period of time and the soundtrack isn’t supposed to dominate the experience and to distract from the core-gameplay. Nevertheless battles are supposed to feel tense and hazardous and each faction will have it’s identity reflected in the choice of instrumentation and style.



Regarding the Orc faction we had a lot of established tropes to play around with: Orcs are perceived as chaotic, fierce, almost savage-like opponents, yet they usually maintain a sort of military hierarchy. Our track ended up being a mix of soundscape and score, dominated by menacing drums but interrupted by swift tribal percussion. Generally we went with a lot of low end on this one, from the staccato celli and upright basses to deep drone-sounds and a (hopefully memorable) brass cue.


Villages

Last, but not least, you can have a listen to the first village theme. It will play in the background as our fellow Battle Brothers stack up on equipment and hire new recruits. We grabbed our guitar for this one and came up with a classical medieval sounding finger picking piece. The time that players spend in villages and towns will hopefully be a welcome opportunity to relax between all those deadly battles.




Also..

We hope you enjoy the tunes! If you want to be kept in the loop regarding new tracks for Battle Brothers, follow us on Soundcloud or Twitter. We’ll be regularly sharing our new compositions up to the game’s release.

[Rap]

Things are moving along.

Dev Blog #29: Greenlight, Greenskins and Persistent Campaigns

It’s been one month now since we’ve launched on Steam Greenlight. Time to give you an update: we’re at 91% of the way to the top 100. So close and yet so far. Unfortunately, daily votes for us have slowed down considerably by now, so if you haven’t casted your vote yet, please do so here and share the link with your friends. Thanks!



On the bright side, we’ve made great progress on the game itself these past two weeks. We now have actual persistent campaigns and no longer just separate combat scenarios. Also, Greenskins!

Persistent Campaigns

Battle Brothers consists of two major parts, the tactical combat and the strategic worldmap. So far, both of those have been existing more or less on their own. The tactical combat was prototyped first and tested by many of you in our combat demo to get the fighting right. The strategic worldmap simulation has also had a life of its own over the past few months – villages trade, bandits raid and militia struggle to keep order, all without much player involvement. Now, finally, we’ve connected both of these parts.



We’re now able to play an actual campaign and take the same band of Battle Brothers from battle to battle as we roam the world. Whether we’re engaging our opponents in a forest, in a swamp or on a road leading over plains on the worldmap, the procedurally generated tactical combat maps reflect this. They also change their ambient lighting to match the time of day on the worldmap. Weather isn’t in yet, but it will soon follow!

Of course, we can also keep the equipment we loot between battles and the experience our Battle Brothers gather from battle now has actual meaning. The campaign can now also be saved and loaded at any time on the worldmap. So, milestone reached. The next step to a complete game.

Greenskins!

While all of that was going on, we also finished the design on Orcs and Goblins. We’re very happy with how they turned out – they have a lot of unique mechanics, their own equipment and behavior. Orcs and Goblins fight very different from each other, and very different from the Undead. Also, just like Battle Brothers, they are subject to fatigue and morale. We’ll give a proper introduction to Orcs and Goblins in separate blog posts, including some of their lore, units, skills and equipment. For now, have a teaser of a goblin with and without heavy armor.



Also, if you’ve played the combat demo in and out, feel safe in the knowledge that our upcoming Early Access version will allow you to fight a dozen different Greenskin variants and no longer just the Undead!