wraggster
October 30th, 2013, 20:22
Super Tank Poker' is the 11th PlayStation Mobile title released by 'TACS Games', the one man indie studio behind 'Shuttle Quest 2000' and 'Out Of Mind'.
A tactical strategy game with cards and tanks, 16 bit retro graphics and an authentic SNES style soundtrack.
"While working on a generic engine for turn based tactical combat games I came upon the idea of a tactics game where the combat was not determined by luck or stats but by a game of poker. In the game a player would consider their combatants as resources as much as actors and an actor's ability to wage war was defined by their value as much as it represented their health. Any unit could best any other with the right advantages and enough luck. The idea came together almost all at once but I decided that the concept would need plenty of testing and this happened in two phases. Initially I had some friends come round and play a prototype of the basic game mocked up with a chess board as a battlefield with chess pieces as tanks and dominoes for barriers. We used paper playing cards to represent the playing cards. Obviously. The game as it stood worked well enough lacked emphasis on the position of tanks. I added the notion of tank position determining initial bet and this seemed to work and I moved into production. The second phase came when the game was playable on device. I wasn't wholly happy with the way it was working and so I recorded a long playtest video and shared this with the PSM community and my followers on twitter. I got lots of feedback and encouragement. Lots of little changes and additions came from this phase but the most important of all would be the special effects and mission types. With these in place the game started to feel complete and I went on to finish the game."
A tactical strategy game with cards and tanks, 16 bit retro graphics and an authentic SNES style soundtrack.
"While working on a generic engine for turn based tactical combat games I came upon the idea of a tactics game where the combat was not determined by luck or stats but by a game of poker. In the game a player would consider their combatants as resources as much as actors and an actor's ability to wage war was defined by their value as much as it represented their health. Any unit could best any other with the right advantages and enough luck. The idea came together almost all at once but I decided that the concept would need plenty of testing and this happened in two phases. Initially I had some friends come round and play a prototype of the basic game mocked up with a chess board as a battlefield with chess pieces as tanks and dominoes for barriers. We used paper playing cards to represent the playing cards. Obviously. The game as it stood worked well enough lacked emphasis on the position of tanks. I added the notion of tank position determining initial bet and this seemed to work and I moved into production. The second phase came when the game was playable on device. I wasn't wholly happy with the way it was working and so I recorded a long playtest video and shared this with the PSM community and my followers on twitter. I got lots of feedback and encouragement. Lots of little changes and additions came from this phase but the most important of all would be the special effects and mission types. With these in place the game started to feel complete and I went on to finish the game."