We're in the final weeks of tweaking and polish so it'll be out very soon. With only one artist and one programmer making the entire game we're working flat out to make sure it meets our high quality standards I'll be sure to tip off TouchArcade when we submit to the AppStore too!
Even better news. Could you talk a little about the unit production/classes in this game (if you don't mind giving away any details). I noticed some of the classes in the YouTube video, but I guess my question is whether you start with and carry a group of units and gain members as you go along (Fire Emblem-esque), or if you build up units while on the map (closer to Advance Wars, perhaps)?
The game is split into two modes - a skirmish mode that will be coming out very soon to help raise the funds to complete the online and single player parts of the game, and the single player campaign which will take a bit longer but has different mechanics. For the skirmish games, you'll have to pick your entire team of 5 at the very start of the mission and that will be your team for the entire match. The team can consist of up to two of each unit type except for the Leader class that has to be part of the team and can't be duplicated. So you could have two rocket launchers, two grenadiers and a leader if you wanted, or a rocket launcher, a grenadier, a commando, a flame thrower and a leader as another example. There are 7 different classes in the game and each class has a weapon upgrade that replaces their weapon making 14 different unit types. Only 5 units will be available for free with more units/upgrades becoming available through in app purchases and future releases. In the deathmatch mode, a death is final and your team dwindles in size, but in flag capture modes, when a unit dies they will respawn after a cooldown and you keep the same team loadout throughout the match. The single player campaign is similar (teams of up to 5, no more than 2 of each type of unit) but you'll start with only a Leader and Rifleman and slowly get new units to use as the campaign progresses.
Wow, awesome! Thank you for the heap information. Sounds pretty cool. I'll definitely be interested when this is out!
Just out of interest, once you've got people interested in the game, it might be worth doing something like Kickstarter project funding to get the game across to new formats. I'm sure once you build up a level of interest on iOS, people will be itching to see this across other formats - 360, PSN, Steam etc. The No Time To Explain guys have so far made over $13k doing it this way! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1296948465/no-time-to-explain-indie-game
I'm really digging the graphics on this one. Looks like a 3D version of Advance Wars but with better graphics. If it plays similar to AW then it's an insta-buy for me.
Bit more info on the official site of TOMEStudios. AhemDangerAllianceAhem http://www.tome-studios.com/games/danger-alliance/ Just need confirmation of the game coming to the Xbox360 and I'll be one happy camper!
Keeping an eye on this one Graphics are great, loving the sound of character customization and deep strategic elements.
An update to the official site has appeared: http://www.tome-studios.com/2011/05/04/danger-alliance-announced/ Guns, knives, rocket launchers and… well, cricket bats. It’s war and the Danger Alliance is gearing up to bring the explosions! It has been a long time coming, hours of weapons testing was undertaken and many litres of cartoon blood were shed, the super-secret codename has been dropped and TOME Studios is almost ready to unleash the newest, most bad-ass member of their small family of games. Lost Company is no more and the newly titled Danger Alliance is about to hit the App Store with an unnecessarily loud bang! The even better news is that you’ll be able to download and play a single map for free! Wow, sounds great! How great is it? Danger Alliance (to put it delicately) rocks balls. We know that that makes us sound a touch arrogant but we have had a lot of help from testers and friends in high places and low. We think that’s helped us take our initial concept and create a game that is simpler, smoother and, most importantly, a heck of a lot of fun. A tactical turn-based action game, Danger Alliance gives you a visually rich 3D battlefield upon which you will find squads of quirky characters wielding deadly, outlandishly oversized weapons. The goal of the game? Use your brain and their unique skills to humiliate your friends on the battlefield (using hot seat style multiplayer), or take on the binary power of your advanced computing device (we support Mac, iPhone or iPad!) and pummel it, in-game, with your baseball bat or monkey wrench. So what’s in the first release? The first release, dubbed Danger Alliance: Battles has several game-modes based around a skirmish style of play, including ‘Strategic Victory’, ‘Annihilation’ and ‘Valuable Target’. Each squad is customisable and the characters all have their own unique weapons and abilities. You need to learn their strengths and weakness and adjust your tactics accordingly and, as you increase your mastery, the AI is ready to ramp up with you. It’s like Chess, with rocket launchers. We’re giving the game away for free with one battle field to play on, and paid users will get even more gorgeous, highly tactical battle fields to continue the battles. So, why are we giving away this awesomeness in a free version? We have a fiendish plan, you see, to make enough money to build Danger Alliance into a fully featured action game starting with the aforementioned core kernel of the gameplay: the skirmish mode. We are releasing the skirmish mode of the game for free with one intense battlefield environment. We are pretty confident that the devilishly addictive nature of the gameplay will render you powerless to resist purchasing (really, really cool) extra battlefields and other additions. These may include character upgrades and perks or different modes of gameplay as we continue working hard to further enrich your experience. Now, while our methods may be diabolical, we feel the end justifies the means. As a studio that encompasses a grand total of only two permanent members, our ambitions, sadly, far outmatch our current resources. We hope that the money we make will allow us to bring you a rocking single player campaign that’ll bring with it a whole heck of a lot more content and gameplay options. There’s also the possibility that we may be able to expand on the hot seat multiplayer capabilities of the free version and implement full-on, new fangled, computer to smart phone to fancy-pants tablet, multiplayer. And we won’t be forgetting those who help us get there either, early adopters will most definitely be getting a sweet deal on all the new stuff we can deliver. Oooh, tell me more about this upcoming Single Player Campaign. The single player campaign will introduce you to who the Danger Alliance really are and why their alliance is so focused on danger. Set in a historical period, not unlike our own 1951, the Danger Alliance was created by the League of Peace (LoP), a pan-European organisation created at the end of the Great War. What was only the first of the world wars in our historical timeline was a much longer and drawn out affair in the universe of the Danger Alliance. The League of Peace formed after the combatants had so exhausted themselves and the population of Old Europe that the whole thing was given away without anyone having won it. Its charter was to prevent conflict by any means possible, including by using such specialist squads as our eponymous heroes to take care of any “troublesome individuals or groups”. As our story opens, renegade ex-US Army Captain Jerry Cash is pulled from the jail cell he was thrown into when his anti corruption campaign, involving the liberation of certain ‘luxuries’ purloined by power mad LoP officials, came to an abrupt end. His small force was taken unawares after partaking of some of the more inebriating ‘luxuries’ liberated in a recent raid. Having been New Europe’s most successful post-war guerrilla commander, when sober, the League of Peace presents him with a deal. The Danger Alliance has been lost behind enemy lines in a small rogue nation, trying to recapture another ex-combatant malcontent in this new Age of Peace; a scientist, some might call him a little mad, who was responsible for some of the more horrendous and creative weapons advances in the war. Cash’s task is to reconnect with the team and lead them in a campaign to find the good doctor and bring him back, alive, to the shadowy Executive Panel of the League. And so the Danger Alliance (featuring such members as Sergeant Benny Edwards, the Australian flamethrower who wields his cricket bat with the same deadly, casual competence as he lights up everything from cigars to the enemy with his flame pack; or Private Gina Lednyak, a skilled engineer from Belarus, whose preferred weapon is a rocket launcher that is heavier than she is) will head into the fray alongside the brave Captain, who hopes that the bad guys will have some very well stocked liquor cabinets. You’ve made me all tingly and excited! What do I do now? So help us make Danger Alliance even more fun, keep an eye on this page and the TOME Studios’ Facebook and Twitter accounts for the announcement that the game is ready for you to download for free… gratis… no money down! If you like it as much as we think you will, chances are you won’t need us to convince you to pay a little extra for more content. If your finger does hover over that button, however, think about where your money is going. Sure, we need to eat, but if we reach our targets most of the money is going straight back into the game to make it even better than it already is (which is really, really good, promise)!
Your new game name sounds really generic. Also,there goes half of your hype train. Are you going to give it a horrible icon to go along with that junk? It's a shame, because your game looks great. I think it's the use or the word danger. Just sounds dumb. Dangerous alliance would be much better if you're really fixated on that base.
I'm actually a bit confounded I've been awaiting this game eagerly since reading this quote: However, it seems that Danger Alliance will not feature any of above-mentioned multiplayer principles. What happened along the twisted way, devs?
While the first version of Danger Alliance will not include online play, it isn't something that's been dropped from the game plan. As you're probably aware, we're a very small team of only two (one programmer and one artist) so getting the game right in so many areas (skirmish, single player campaign, online experience, rule set, intuitive interface, etc) is an enormous task. We could give half baked versions of each part of the game but that doesn't meet our quality standards . We've broken free of the 'standard' mobile TBS game and made an amazingly beautiful and intuitive game for mobile devices. To make Danger Alliance viable and to keep us in business, we've had to prioritise our plans and focus on one thing at a time, and after some early play testing with a bunch of external testers, we quickly found that a single player experience was the best component to roll out first. You'll still be able to play against your friends on the one device, but online play is going to come a little later. By grabbing a copy of Danger Alliance: Battles, you'll be getting an amazing mobile TBS that's engaging and gorgeous, AND you'll be making sure our single player campaign and online game modes can be fully realised. I'm very excited about Danger Alliance and it's really going to make quite a splash on the App Store
