With 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Wargroove 2, Chucklefish and Robotality are bringing the 2019 turn-based tactics game back for a second outing. The indie title was on the show floor at this year's PAX East with a demo showing off a series' first: a new roguelike mode called Conquest.
As the demo kicks off, a brief tutorial reintroduces players to the basics of gameplay. As Nadia, a big, muscular woman with thick dreads, you learn the Wargroove fundamentals, moving around the starting battlefield and making short work of easy opponents. Because Nadia's weapon is a flamethrower fashioned from a wooden barrel, you roast each opponent with a fountain of fire. She's also a pirate, which Stefan Bachmann, a designer and programmer on the game, says is one of two new factions added for the sequel. The other hasn't been announced yet.
Each time you initiate an attack, the game switches to a split screen view showing both your character and the opposing combatant. When your character attacks, they disappear from their side of the screen then, a beat later, show up on your opponent's side. The same happens, in reverse, when your opponent attacks.
Reaching your enemies doesn't take long in Conquest because each battlefield I saw was bite-sized. Most of the time, the entire playspace was visible all at once. Though I didn't mind the positioning rounds in the original Wargroove, this is a smart tweak for a roguelike. Players have already positioned themselves when a new fight begins, deciding what they want to do in their next round from the branching map roguelike fans are likely familiar with. I didn't see anything outside of combat during my demo, but if this branching map is like the ones included in popular roguelikes like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Cult of the Lamb and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Slay the Spire, this is also likely the place where you'll recruit new characters and purchase health.
As the demo progressed, each stage I played through showed off a different scenario you might encounter over the course of a run. In the first, conditions were normal with the sun shining as Nadia and co. made short work of the enemy faction. Even though I easily made it through that first encounter, damage carries over between bouts. I still had all my units — a mounted warrior, a spear-wielder, and a dog — heading into the next fight, but they were in a significantly more vulnerable position as I faced subsequent attacks. I felt the nerves kicking in when I reached a battlefield with fog of war enabled. Moving my characters across the battlefield, I didn't know where enemies might be hiding, which led to a few ambushes as my AI opponents emerged from the mists.
Damage caught up with me in my fourth battle, a fight against elite enemies on a battlefield shrouded in darkness where the only light pooled outward from wherever my characters or opponents were currently standing. I never found health during the demo so, once Nadia went down, the run was over. Players will need to protect their commander; losing them means losing the run. I didn't get to use it in the demo, but Wargroove 2 also introduces tiered Grooves which could have helped me turn the tide for Nadia. In the first game, you could build up energy for a powerful boon with army-wide effects. In the sequel, you can continue to save your power to unlock an even more effective Groove.
The first Wargroove launched in 2019, when more than a decade had elapsed since the last game in the series that inspired it, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Advance Wars. But Wargroove 2 is targeting a late 2023 date, just a few months after the long-delayed Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp arrives on Switch. Will there be room for both? Though the game will also feature three bespoke campaigns, Conquest Mode makes a solid argument for Wargroove 2's long-term viability. Bachmann says that the new mode gives the game the potential for "long-tail replayability," and I suspect the possibility of playing forever will help keep the underserved Cute Tactics demographic satisfied.