Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Strategy, Indie, Arcade
Tooth and Tail
Patch 1.2.0: PS4 Crossplay
Tooth and Tail 1.2 has arrived! PS4 Crossplay, a new territory game that integrates with our Discord server, 4 new languages, and the biggest balance patch we’ve done in months. Pull up to the table, here we go!
PS4 Crossplay
The long-awaited PS4/PC crossplay is now live, which means PS4 players can play against Steam and GOG players and vice versa. Note that the leaderboards are still segregated by platform.
New Discord Game - Pocketworld (Beta)
Head to the Pocketworld channel in Discord and type ’!team red’ (or green, blue, yellow) to declare yourself a member of a particular faction. When you play ranked matches, you’ll advance that faction’s territory on the map! Help your faction conquer Vyeshal and feast on your enemies!
New Discord board - Matchboard
See a history of ranked matches and their outcomes! Revel in that time Mastastealth beat ChipFromSpace on the ladder!
New Languages
German
Brazilian Portuguese
Turkish
Russian
Balance Changes
If a structure takes damage while building, it will stop earning health for 1 second (but it will continue to build). No more mill/mg tanking!
Commander burrow time 2 seconds (was 2.5)
Reptiles and Amphibians heal 3x as fast in friendly territory (1.5 HP per second after not taking damage for 5 seconds)
Enemies can see what type of unit is building from all Tier 3 warrens
Lizard: 7 HP (was 8)
Mole: 20 HP (was 22), 2.5x damage to structures (was 2)
Chameleon: 36 HP (was 38)
Falcon: 15 HP (was 17)
Skunk: 29 HP (was 32)
Snake: 28 HP (was 27)
Boar: 100 HP (was 120)
Barbed Wire: 28 HP (from 24)
Machine Gun Turret 5 Damage (was 6)
Artillery: Range 10, Bullet time 2 seconds, Build time 50 seconds
Bug Fixes
(PC) Fixed Mission Hint in Archimedes mission 3
(PS4) Fixed Audio-related crash
(PS4) Fixed online gameplay crash
Increased Redplug timeout to 60 seconds to account for longer load times on PS4
Galaxy crash on Linux fixed
Upcoming Community Events
Don’t forget, the Tooth and Tail PVP Campaign event starts May 26th! Discord server is here and Official Rules and Entry Instructions are here!
Tooth and Tail League Season 2 Starts Tomorrow - Sign Up Now!
Ahoy everyone, starting tomorrow (the 19th), qualifiers for Season 2 of the League will open up! There will be qualifiers from the 19th - 22nd, and then from the 26th - 29th, with days alternating between NA and EU times.
For all the details, please read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oTFgPqkzhYIvh_Vm7-i_8ElNYPil8t6LrTKsdOer_0c/edit?usp=sharing
Qualifiers and registration will be handled purely through Discord and Pocketbot! This is brand new functionality, so please bear with us if we run into any bugs.
Feel free to ping @mastastealth if you have any questions. If you want to get in on the competition, head on over to http://discord.gg/pocketwatch and ask around in the #tournaments channel to see how to join!
From the Tooth to The Long Tail - What We’ve Done and Where We’re Going
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!
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 - #8
Season 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.
With Tooth and Tail starting to enter its "long tail" life cycle, we're taking a broad approach to keeping a healthy player community.
Crossplay
We'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 Platforms
Still nothing to announce, but yes, we're investigating new platforms for Tooth and Tail. Stay tuned.
New Feature -- Leaderboards and Standard Seeds in Story Mode
The 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.
Balance
You 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!
Patch 1.1.4: Eat Crow
Sometimes, you just have to admit you're wrong. A few of the changes that I've made over the past months haven't been received well, and I spent a lot of time trying to fix them when in fact the best thing to do is just back them out.
And because I was away for a week at GDC and I didn't have my finger on the pulse of the community, the changes in this patch are largely derived from mods that the community made -- in particular by the esteemed JetEriksen and EEluminatus.
The lizard changes from last patch are gone, and by community request, swift has been reduced from 2x speed to 1.75. This affects fox, lizard, and mouse. Boar bomb has been greatly reduced and boar has been given a modified agile: he can move at 50% speed while firing. This means that his bomb can both be buffed (to 20 DMG!) but reduced in range from a 9x9 radius to 3x3. Toad, skunk and mole changes also come directly from community modding and testing.
I've also made a couple of changes that I've wanted to do to Pigeon and Artillery. Pigeon now has less heal but a much longer range. Artillery has a slightly longer range and the bullet time scales with the distance it is firing.
We've also added German as an official language! Turkish is coming soon.
New languages
German
Balance Changes
Lizard - Reverted Diamond range to standard 2 range, 8HP (from 7HP), reduced Swift to 1.75x speed (from 2x)
Mouse - Reduced Swift to 1.75x speed (from 2x), 8 HP, 3 DMG (was 7 HP, 2 DMG)
Boar - 4 DPS, removed structure crit (from 3 DPS + structure crit). Boar can move at 50% speed while firing. Boar bomb reduced to 3x3 (from 9x9) and boar bomb DMG is 20 (was 5 to units, 10 to structures), no longer targets commander
Badger - No longer targets commander
Artillery - 10 Range, Bullet lifetime 2 seconds, scales by range (was 8 range, bullet lifetime of 1.5 seconds at all ranges)
Patch 1.1.3: Diamonds (are a Lizard's Best Friend)
Balance-wise, this patch is focused on reducing lizard spam through a fairly major lizard nerf and nerfs to both Bullet Hive and Featherwire, which have been used to establish containment chokes. Also, there's a major buff to Owl to bring her back into play.
On the single player side: Multiplayer stats have diverged significantly from single player stats since the game came out, so I moved the stat changes over to the single player campaign and rebalanced the whole darn thing in order to have a smoother difficulty curve.
New Features
* Players can now burrow to allied bases in 2v2
Balance Changes
* Lizard - 7 HP (from 8); 2 range only covers a diamond shape rather than a circle shape (slight reduction in attack range coverage at 2 range)
* Chameleon - 38 HP (from 40)
* Boar - Flamethrower Coverage of 6 tiles (from 10); Boar bomb 5 dmg (10 to structures), no longer hits air (was 7/14, hits air)
* Owl - 1 mouse per second up to 3, 7 second reload, leading to 3 mice every 10 seconds (was 1 mouse per 5 seconds), they live for 30 seconds (was 60), mice have 7 HP (was 10)
* Barbed Wire - 24 HP (from 30)
* Landmine - 12 Damage, 6 AOE (from 18/6); 0.4 second trigger (from 0.5 seconds); Can target cloaked Chameleons
* Machine Gun Turret - 28 HP (from 32)
* Artillery - 60 HP (from 50)
Bug Fixes
* Campfires no longer push back gristmill territory as if they had gristmill-sized range
* Artillery shots no longer remove decor objects (like trees) when they miss
* Lizard no longer hang out in back, waiting for a reservation position to open up
Story Mode
* Moved all single player unit stats over to Story Mode
* Snikaree Liberation (Hopper 1) - Start with Chameleons not Lizards
* Scrapetown Racket (Hopper 5) - Increase number of merchants by 2
* Frozen in Noe (Quartermaster 1) - Enemy spawn rate ramps up more slowly
* Howling Vell (Quartermaster 2) - Player starts with an additional mill
* Defense of the Cold Mark Lows (Quartermaster 3) - Archimedes starts with an additional mill, one fewer campfire on map
* Betrayal at Vacancee (Quartermaster 4) - Player starts with 2 additional farms
* The War For Meat (Quartermaster 5) - Player can build skunks, not pigeons, Campfires have Skunks not Pigeons, number of enemy on enemy kills required for Heroic reduced from 150 to 60, Enemies start with 1 mill with 4 farms instead of 2 mills with 3 farms
* What Might Be (Quartermaster 6) - Player can recruit falcon, boar and wolf instead of falcon, pigeon, skunk
* Awash in Solawa (Archimedes 2) - 50% fewer enemy landmines
* Vacancee Downfall (Archimedes 3) - Player can build mole instead of snake
Hotfix 1.1.2.1: Black Screen and Lobby Fix
A quick hotfix for all yout Midweek Madness customers. The game was being a bit of a hog with VRAM, which was producing some of the Black Screen, White Screen, and "SharpDX" errors on lower spec machines. I've reduced the Graphics Memory footprint when playing in Medium and Low Graphics Quality settings.
Don't forget, you may also improve VRAM usage by disabling the cinematic under Graphics Options.
I also replaced the Galaxy libraries to fix a crash upon leaving a lobby.
Annnd, if you fail to join a lobby, it won't try to join that lobby again until you leave the Ranked screen. So for those instances where you kept trying to play ranked and it kept failing out, this problem should be fixed.
As usual, if you have problems with the game, post on the troubleshooting forums, email me at support@pocketwatchgames.com, or best of all, jump into our Discord channel and chat with us directly in the #troubleshooting channel! http://discord.gg/pocketwatch
Patch 1.1.2: Snek Haus
Patch 1.1.2 is a small bug fix/balance patch with big changes to Snake and Artillery. Sorry about the late patch notes!
Balance Changes
Snake - HP 27 (from 35). Can now poison structures again. Ever since we removed structure tagging, snakes have felt very flat. And since structure play is now much more viable, there needed to be more options for dealing with things like MG Turrets, Balloons, and Artillery.
Artillery - Cost 180 (from 120), Build time 30 seconds (from 20), HP 50 (from 45). The Tier 2 Artillery was stupidly strong, and was even unbeatable in rush scenarios. Unfortunately, bumping it to the Tier 3 timing, which is now 50 seconds), meant that I suspect the unit would never get used. So I broke down and made an exception to the strict timing consistency that I've maintained for other units. It feels pretty good now, and I think will still get used quite often.
Bug Fixes
Winning multiple stars in a match in ranked will now display the correct star animations.
Multiple crashes and disconnects in Ranked games fixed.
Crash on starting matches fixed.
Hotfix 1.1.1.3: Drumfire Balance
A little hotfix for y'all that makes a more appropriate statline for the Tier 2 Drumfire Cannon. There's also a significant Mole nerf and some fixes for the new crossplay code. Yay!
Balance Changes
Mole - Dmg 2 + structure crit (was 4 + crit), HP 25 (was 15). High level players have essentially stopped using Mole because it's nigh unbeatable, so we've nerfed its statline again. Mr. Mole will still get a significant redesign at some point, while hopefully retaining his character.
Fox - Cast time and Post-shot Root time changed from 0.3/0.3 seconds to 0.2/0.4 seconds. The fox still is rooted for 0.6 seconds but has a shorter cast time to make the animation look right.
Artillery - HP 60 (was 45). 10 Dmg per shot with random 1 tile scatter to shots - NO AOE (was 6 + 1 AOE). Fires 4 times in 1 second, takes 1 second cooldown. (was firing 3 times in a second with 2 second cooldown). This is more fitting with the t2 pricing/timing while still accomplishing the feeling of an anti-t1 AOE.
Bug Fixes
Galaxy/Steam crossplay crashing issues fixed, works correctly on Windows 7.
EDIT - Nerfing Drumfire a touch: new statline: 50 HP (was 60), bullet travel time 1.5 seconds (was 1 second)
Patch 1.1.1: GOG Crossplay
Patch 1.1.1 is out, and with it, crossplay between Steam and GOG players is now live. There's also a number of stability fixes for Mac players, a ton of balance changes, and a revamp in the MMR points for winning in Ranked matches.
Features
GOG players and Steam players can now play together! You will notice that you need to select your region before playing online, which you can always change via the options menu.
Global Pick and Win Rates now represent last 2 weeks of data rather than all time
Ranked Bottom tier no longer loses points upon loss
Sneaky hidden option for saving out minimaps (figure it out or ask me in discord!)
Balance Changes
All the balance changes in this match were based on the Global Pick and Win Rates in the last two weeks of Ranked play. I nerfed Falcon, which had a very high pick rate, and over 50% win rate, and I buffed some Tier 3 and a bunch of defensive structures. Here are the stats:
Toad: 6 DMG, 3 AOE; 12/6 vs structures (was 9/3, no structure crit) - This is just fixing a mistake from the last patch, the new numbers were the intended design.
Falcon: 5 DMG 17 HP (was 6 DMG 15 HP)
Boar: 10 tile flamethrower coverage (was 8), Death bomb does 7 DMG, 14 vs structures (was 6/12)
Fox: 0.3 second cast time, 0.3 second movement cooldown (was 0.25+0.5 seconds) - Fox now is rooted for a total of 0.6 seconds instead of 0.75. Back when everyone thought she was overpowered, she was at 0.25. Hopefully players can still counter her.
Owl: Mice have 10 HP (was 12)
Wolf: 50 HP (was 60)
Landmine: 18 DMG, 6 AOE (was 15/5); Vision increased to 4 tiles (was 1 tile), trigger time returned to 0.5 seconds (was 0.25)
Barbed Wire: Vision increased to 4 tiles (was 1 tile)
Artillery: Tier 2! Costs 120, build time is 20 seconds. 45 HP (was 60). 3 shots fired over 1 second, with a 2 second cooldown before next volley. Each shot does 6 DMG, 3 AOE. (Was 5 shots over 2 seconds with 3 second cooldown, each shot was, oh hell, the math was weird, I have no idea).
Tier 3 build and production time increased to 50 seconds (was 45)
Warren health 50 HP for all tiers (was 50/65/80)
MMR Changes
Points for winning vs players with the following tier differentials are now:
6: 80 (was 100)
5: 78 (was 90)
4: 74 (was 80)
3: 68 (was 60)
2: 60 (was 45)
1: 50 (was 30)
0: 40 (was 20)
-1: 30 (was 10)
-2: 16 (was 5)
-3: 8 (was 4)
-4: 5 (was 3)
-5: 2 (was 2)
-6: 1 (was 1)
Bug fixes
Wolf buffed toads no longer fizzle
Crash when using boar fixed
Random Mac crashes fixed
Mouse position on weird Mac resolutions now lines up to buttons correctly
Duplicate flag design for Hopper mission 6 fixed
Patch 1.1.0: (tis the) SEASON 2!!!
Season 2 has arrived, and with it a revamp of Ranked matchmaking!
Ladder Reset
Season 2 uses a different model for determining player skill, so we're resetting the ladder. Come scramble your way back up again!
Player Stats
You can now see your pick rate and win rate for each unit on the Ranked screen by clicking the Stats button. You can also see community-wide pick and win rates. If everyone is going squirrel, follow the meta or play counter meta!
MMR
You will now gain/lose different amounts of points based on the difference in rank between you and your opponent.
Earn 100 points to advance a tier. While "Fury of the Feast" is still the top tier, every 100 points will advance you another master rank. If you beat someone 6 ranks below you, you will gain a point and they will lose a point. If you beat someone 6 ranks or more above you you will gain 100 points and they will lose 100 points.
Point change for each tier differential are as follows:
-6 or more: 1 point
-5: 2 points
-4: 3 points
-3: 4 points
-2: 5 points
-1: 10 points
Equal Rank: 20 points
+1: 30 points
+2: 45 points
+3: 60 points
+4: 80 points
+5: 90 points
+6 or more: 100 points
Map Fairness
During map generation, if the game determines that there is a severe imbalance in spawn positions, it will throw out the map and try again. Currently, the algorithm takes into account:
Number of expansions each spawn point is closest to
Elevation
For FFA: Distance to closest opponent
For 2v2: Distance to farthest teammate
Balance Changes
Landmine: Cast time 0.25 seconds (from 0.5)
Toad: 9 HP 6 DMG / 3 AOE (from 11 HP, 8 DMG / 2 AOE), can be denied during 0.25 second detonation time
Skunk: 35 HP (from 32)
Chameleon: 6 DMG (from 7)
New Language
Italian
Follow Development
Don't forget to follow our Twitch channel if you want to be a part of development, and join our Discord to be a part of the community and find matches!
One last thing: If you want a wallpaper version of our gruesome Last Supper -- without the Patch text -- here ya go!
