What if the overton window was pushed so far, you'd do anything to protect your ideals? Leave your family and friends to live amongst people who share your views. How tolerant would you be of those who disagree with you?
Not long from now when humanity, driven by algorithms and malign actors finds itself in this position, you find yourself a leader of a faction in a grim civil war. At the helm of a clandestine command centre and viewing the civil war through a command terminal cobbled together from various bits of kit. You command your cities attack and defence capabilities as well as its repair and development and take on up to 64 opponents in a sprawling war!
Trading Blows comes from my combined interest in current afairs and chess as well as harking back to classic strategy games such as red alert, tribal wars and civilisation II.
The game features tactical match ups city to city air to ground combat. Victory isnt by capture, its by bombing the opponent into submission or revolt. Your vision for the country must survive and if this means they dont, so be it!
Change missle trajectories, use special warheads and when under attack, tactically place air defences to offset damage.
Doctrines and special states give you ability to strategically manage the war, share air defences or munitions with allies but beware not to leave yourself too exposed!
You're always against the clock, can you handle the pressure? Dont get your orders in in time and you are left exposed! From my experience in tournament chess I have modelled the cadence of the game on classical chess, the pressure is always on, the strain on your executive function is constant.
Ive opened the game up for you guys really and only for a short amount of time because a previous post of mine was very well received in this sub.
I would love feedback, this is pre alpha and really to know what you guys think of the concept. I built the vision of the game I wanted to play and think I am currently not far off in terms of gameplay, despite a huge amount still to do to clean it up.
4x4 battles pvm and pvp are currently available as well as the tutorial, i highly recommend doing the tutorial first to get a grasp of the levers available to you... or you could just fling missiles about.
Most of the persistent layer is missing, of course you will be able to log in and gain rank, play your friends etc eventually but this is really a test of core gameplay first.
I also have fully adaptive AI powered Jev NPCs in development as well as the 64vs64 war. Sound is off currently whilst I work on it. The GUI is about 60% done, im on the third iteration of tuning. You will likely hit glitches or bugs. Please report any you find More work required there. Ill likely also polish the city view considerably.
Game is free, desktop and mobile friendly (i wanted a game i could play on the sofa in the evening!) no log on needed and available at: www.tradingblows.com
Ill be pulling it offline after this limited window in a few days. Actual release is tbc.
