It seems hard to believe that it's almost one year 🎂 since the full release of Mech Armada. One. Year.
And what a year this has been. While I was busy working on the console port I enjoyed seeing the community engage with the game. I loved seeing your comments and reading your reviews.
I want to thank you for your support. When I started working in Mech Armada almost 4 years ago I couldn't have dreamed for a better reception 🙏🙏🙏
You may have noticed the demo is back up, so feel free to grab it if you want to check out the game for yourself. It includes the first region, all the way to the first boss! (good luck).
Finally, to celebrate turning one, I'm offering our biggest discount yet: a whooping 55% off 💰💰💰. The sale starts on June 3rd 📅 and goes all the way to the anniversary, on June 16th 📅.
I also want to hear from you! I respond to every comment on the Discord personally, be sure to say hi!
- Fixed description translations for Flamethrower (most languages) and Walker (Japanese)
Turn-Based Gamers Rejoice!
Hi Everyone,
This has been an excellent season for Turn-Based Tactical Roguelite lovers. After Tacticon and Roguelike Celebration now comes the first ever Turn-Based Fest and Mech Armada is going to be a part of it!
To celebrate both our participation in the festival and the launch of the console port (releasing December 8th on all platforms!), we're running a promotion here on Steam with our deepest discount yet: you can get Mech Armada 33% off.
After a few long months of work, Mech Armada is finally coming to console. The release date is December 8th. Here on Steam there is also a new update waiting for you.
The Problem
I want to talk a bit about the topic of difficulty, which is (pun intended) a difficult topic.
There is an understanding among players that roguelikes/roguelites are going to be difficult, especially at first. The heart of these games is to learn to play and develop your skill through multiple retries (and deaths) until you master them, little by little. That means the "skill floor" (how skilled you have to be to beat the game, even if just barely) is pretty high. This is a problem for some players, as they may never be able to reach that skill floor and are forced to leave the game, frustrated.
In Mech Armada I tried to approach this by having persistent upgrades that will make you more powerful over time, so as you're learning the game you're also getting additional support from extra energy and credits, as well as other bonuses that will add up to make your run more likely to succeed. The rate at which you unlock these is also delicate: too fast and the game becomes too easy too quickly, too slow and you can't really see the benefits for many runs.
With all of this said, difficulty is still a problem in Mech Armada, as shown by reviews like this one:
On the other hand, people are finding the game too easy. And yes, you can increase difficulty quite a bit, so that's not really a concern.
I do believe that some amount of challenge is necessary for the game to be enjoyable, but I don't want to lock players out if they can't reach the skill floor, even after collecting persistent upgrades.
The Solution
Games like Slay the Spire don't provide an "easy" mode, and I can reach the skill floor just fine. This is not true for action games like Hades, where the first boss wrecks me easily on almost every run. Hades is a good example though, because they added an accessibility option to make the game easier for people like me.
So I'm doing something similar with Mech Armada.
In most cases players have trouble with their Mechs being destroyed too quickly. So I thought the easiest solution would be to provide an option to add extra health. This has been added in 1.01:
Once you activate this, your parts will get between 1-3 extra health points. This applies to transports and torsos, so a typical Mech can gain as many as 6 health points.
Outside of this change, 1.01 contains a few fixes and cosmetic improvements.
I'm hoping with this setting you can make it further into the game if you're stuck. Please, let me know what you think in our Discord or in the Steam forums.
When I started this project 3 years ago, I told myself that the game would be successful if I could sell 20,000 copies. Back then, it seemed like a huge number that would be hard to reach.
Today, I'm thrilled to tell you that Mech Armada has reached that goal.
Thanks to all of you, I'll be able to continue to support my family and keep making games. You have no idea how much this means to me.
I'm honoured to announce that I'll be giving a talk for this years Roguelike Celebration: https://www.roguelike.club/event2022.html
If you haven't heard of it, developers of Roguelike games get together to discuss all kinds of topics in a friendly and insightful environment.
My talk is about "Procedural 3D environments on a budget" where I'll discuss some of the challenges I faced building Mech Armada and the techniques I used to overcome them. It's on Sunday, Oct 23rd, at 4pm (PDT).
There will be a Steam event showcasing the games from the devs presenting and some other popular roguelikes: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/roguelikecelebration2022
You can also grab a ticket for the conference here but the talks get posted to the Roguelike Celebration YouTube channel (where you can also check out previous years).
It's been a while since we've shared news here. I've been busy with the console port, but this month we are happy to be part of the very first Tacticon, the convention for tactical games on Steam. You can see the full list of games here.
To celebrate, you can get Mech Armada 30% off during the event. This is our biggest discount yet!
But that's not all. If you've been wanting to try the game you can download a free demo, starting today. The demo will be up during the event, but we'll take it down at some point afterwards, so make sure to download it and play it while you can.
The demo will include the first environment of the roguelike campaign. If you like it, you can keep your meta-progress after you buy the full game (unlocked parts and improvements).
Are you excited for Tacticon? Did you play the demo? Let me know in our official Discord, I'd love to hear from you!
It's been a month since the launch, and what a month it has been!
I'm very happy with the results and the efforts to improve the game during Early Access have paid off. I hope you're enjoying the game and rest assured I'll keep a close eye on all the feedback across the forums and Discord.
Today I wanted to announce that Mech Armada is being ported to consoles. I'm getting help for the port from my friends at Eclipse Games (they just released Super Toy Cars Offroad, go check it out).
There's no specific dates at the moment, but I can say that you can expect the port to land later this year. More concrete dates will arrive as soon as I have them. This is my first time going through the certification process for each console platform, so I expect there will be a few hiccups.
Lastly, I'd love to highlight some of the streams that covered the game at or near launch. They're pretty cool and you should check them out!
