itch.io demo: DOCTRINEERS Public Demo by junkmail (15 missions! and multiplayer, too!)
technology: ggez
platforms: whatever computers i can get it to compile on
genre: advance wars ripoff
trailer: here
status: alpha but pretty far along
playerness: both singleplayer and networked multiplayer
screens:
design/code/writing: me
art: my brother
music: uhhhhhhhhhhhhh
DOCTRINEERS is my attempt to secretly convince people who are casual fans of Turn-Based strategy to embrace the grognard hell of competitive multiplayer strategy gaming. The game uses a Doctrine system, where off-map powers and the rights to build special units are auctioned off at the start of a match (in campaign, these are determined by the mission). Special units all have some kind of weird sauce to them that makes it so that they’re not just a rehash of older units - we’ve got stuff like Armored Cars which can move again after making an attack, Airships, which launch an AOE attack, and Commandos, which are a permanently stealthed infantry unit.
A big goal of ours is strategic diversity - where most players are content to build a big army and slowly bulldoze their way across the map, the unit roster and map/mission design encourages players to play more loosely and aggressively, but with a variety of approaches which are useful in different situations. In general, we view the Doctrine system and our campaign mission design as a way to kick the player in the pants and force them to adopt new strategies they might not have considered before, instead of leaning back and relying on simple defensive strategies.
At this point, we’d consider ourselves in late alpha. All of the core systems are there, and while there’s still certainly a lot of polish and content design, we’re pretty confident in what we have. The big thing we’re missing is music and proper sound. It turns out that music is expensive and sound is hard! We’re looking into hiring a local musician, and also into doing effects/sound editing in a way we can afford.
DOCTRINEERS is written in 100% rust, using ggez, a lightweight graphics library. It’s a cool language! The approach we’ve picked is pretty idiosyncratic - I like to think my code is laid out in a sane way, but we’re not using standard approaches like ECSes or event systems.
We’re still making a lot of stuff behind the scenes, and hoping to launch a(nother, after the first failed) Kickstarter sometime in Q4. Let us know what you think!