Journalists have one bad trait that often gives rise to unhealthy funeral ideas like: “Wow! Yes, quests are extinct! I’ll write why this happened, what a shame and, in general, this is how games in this genre should be… ”. The fact that real-time tactics literally died out as a genre is not only to blame for the progress with its stunning graphics and realism, but also the players themselves put a lot of effort into this, having ceased to pay all attention to isometric and tactically difficult games.

Nevertheless, tactical stealth in the spirit of the Commandos game cannot really be buried. Why? Yes, because the genre, as such, did not really live. Outside of the same Commandos, representatives of this genre are practically not found. Although you can also call something outright - the game Desperados. But, alas, we obviously won't wait for the continuation of these two old games. So now we can say that Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is the only representative of tactical games in real time. And who would have thought that Mimimi Produstions, under the strict guidance of Daedalic Entertainment, would be able to bring back the time when games, while not looking like movies, were just damn fun!

It is also interesting that the developers guessed with the release date, because if the game was released a month or even two months earlier, and not in a relatively empty December, the game would probably be left unattended: it would be difficult to find time for it in a rather tight autumn schedule. Therefore, now the most terrible competitor to Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is Dead Rising on the PC with its already rather annoying undead theme.

Feudal Japan

The game takes place in the troubled Edo era, when the feudal fragmentation of Japan has almost come to an end. In 615, the shogun finally defeated the last stronghold of resistance, but not without hot heads, who managed to cool down and stayed on their shoulders, so now the influential and mysterious daimyo strives to overthrow the new emperor. And our detachment of assassins - also, by the way, secretly - is trying to finish the case and take off the head of the surviving troublemaker.

→ Learning in the game is presented in the form of "reconnaissance in force": the basic principles of the game will be set out in numerous scrolls, no one will bother with you like a child.

And don't be confused by the setting chosen by the developers - post-feudal Japan is ideal for this genre. At the junction of the living samurai code and the gunpowder revolution, there is just everything you need to create something extremely fascinating and curious.

There are practically no values ​​in the storyline. Plot dialogues are just expanded briefings. Communication is reduced to the usual chatter and harmless jokes. The storyline company is set in such a way that you gradually and rather smoothly get to know all your squad members, and in the final missions you will reveal absolutely their full potential. The story itself most likely will not decorate the passage with any unusual narrative, or interesting plot twists. Nevertheless, there is still a story here and in between tasks there will be something to see.

→ Even in a stealth game, there is room for explosions.

It is clear that in any game it is pleasant to meet an extraordinary storyline and its presentation, however, in Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, the plot fulfills one single and at the same time main function - justifying the tasks and goals of the journey. And you won't be able to get out of this function in any way.

Crouching tiger

Since the shogun is not thrilled that they are going to overthrow him, he assembles a team of professional saboteurs who will have to disrupt or destroy at all villainous plans in order to save the region from political strife. The group of assassins is headed by the samurai Mugen, and the assistants are: the hired ninja Hayato, along with his young student Yuki; an elderly sniper named Tokuma and either a spy or a geisha Aiko.

Aiko is a master of reincarnation. For example, if on the map it will be possible to find ownerless clothes, then she, like the same Spy from Commandos, will try on clothes and will be able to roam freely among the enemies, creating for them different kinds dirty tricks. Unfortunately, the girl does not have a syringe with poison with her, but she perfectly wields a hairpin and a special spray powder that obscures the victim's eyes. It is only important to follow the rules, for example, not to rampage in front of several guards, otherwise the disguise will immediately disappear, using suspicious maneuvers.

→ The plot will be presented in the form of small clips between missions, therefore, it is not particularly interesting. On the other hand, he doesn't have to "shine" in such games.

The aged Tokumu does not always try to stay as far away from conflicts as possible. In addition to the fact that he can kill villains through the scope of a sniper rifle, he can also use deadly, noisy bombs. In addition, he carries with him a cute tame raccoon, which with his squeak can attract the general attention of enemies. For the rest, grandfather is practically useless: he does not take part in close combat, and he hobbles much more slowly than his other comrades.

Mugen, on the other hand, succeeded precisely in close combat. The coolest skill of this character is an attack on an entire sector: he flies into a crowd of enemies and, in an elegant Japanese dance, cuts the throats of surrounding opponents, with the exception of the most powerful enemies. In addition, a physically successful samurai knows how to carry huge and heavy boulders, and throw them at enemies. Which, by the way, is regarded by AI as an accident, not a murder, therefore, no one raises the alarm if someone is crushed by a boulder.

In addition to special skills, heroes also differ in manners and pace of action. For example, men, in addition to pensioner Tokuma, can carry bodies on their shoulders in full growth, but girls drag them slowly along the ground, and this feature is not always used in different contexts in the same way. If it is necessary to cover up the tracks as soon as possible, then it is better to call the men in the team, but if it is necessary to drag the corpse, while not raising his head (so as not to light up in front of the guard standing next to him), then let the ladies go ahead.

Most other elements work in a similar way. Almost all the characters “pick” the enemy with a knife for a long time, and during this time other sentries pay attention to the battle, but Mugen is so skillful in his katana that he can manage to do everything on time and unnoticed. The samurai's katana will hit more painfully than the firearms of the other characters, but then in samurai armor you won't get into the water - you will have to study the subtleties of each hero. Considering that there are quite a few of them.

→ And Mugen is also able to easily carry barrels of gunpowder, and together with Tokuma, arrange a real fireworks to the delight of all the rebels.

The only catch is that a couple of times for the entire company (only thirteen missions), the group will operate with its full complement. Usually, no more than three heroes are sent to the rear to the enemy, some less often, some more often, so you will not be able to act constantly according to the same plan, although certain preferences will definitely be formed during the passage.

The only one who sits in the bushes most of the tasks is Tokuma. Of course, there he comprehends Zen. In the bushes, he can quickly remove a couple of guards who are standing on the towers and thereby make way for the young - let them frolic further.

And finally, the main character of this whole "gang" is the ninja Hayato. True, the guy does not fit a little into the framework of genre roles, because he knows how to hide, climb with a grappling hook, throw shurikens - ninja, in general. The most versatile hero.

Tangled puzzle

For games like Commandos, there is one important and ironclad rule: the levels must be well constructed and elegantly outlined. This is not a crash site like XCOM: Enemy Within, where you can spend half an hour at best. Cards in combination with stealth tactics cannot be ordinary faded warehouses with boxes, otherwise in 1-2 hours such a game will get bored, and in 3 hours of play, the gamer will simply go crazy or just quit playing such a game.

→ It is not necessary to change clothes whenever someone has left their belongings unattended. Nevertheless, intrigues are much easier in someone else's form.

In its structure, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun resembles a kind of sandbox: there are heroes, there are tasks, but the roads between these two parts will have to be paved independently. In this game, it is extremely rare to be led by the handle along the corridor (which does not exist, by the way). You have the right to independently choose from which flank to get close to the key goal. You have the right to independently distribute responsibilities for the wards. You yourself have the right to decide what to do with the enemies: to kill or not to kill them at all (you can knock out enemies for a while, but you cannot tie up the body of enemies, as it was possible in Desperados, so remember that the poor fellow who wakes up will immediately start to panic and raise alarm).

Sometimes Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun even slightly imitates the Hitman series, because there are several options for how you can eliminate a particular target: shoot from a tower, or mix poison into tea. Sometimes these options are not obvious, but nevertheless, you can do as you please.

→ Thanks to Yuki's beautiful pipe, you can clear space for yourself, but this trick will not work with samurai.

Studio Mimimi Productions did not make a mistake and did not go in cycles in one scheme, therefore it will periodically shake you up in the game. Once, for example, on a swampy territory, enemies will begin to hear your steps better, even if the hero is crouching. For that, during sorties, the radius and even the viewing range of the sentries is much smaller here, but now the location of the torches should be taken into account.

And during large-scale battles between the armies of the Kage-sama and the shogun, the enemies will be more carried away by gunfights than the usual patrolling of the territory, but some enemies will actively run around the map with reports and assignments. Once in a snow-covered area, in general, there will be footprints in the snow, so the guards will definitely pay attention to them and find out where they are leading.

It is a certain "juggling" of conditions that will complicate and introduce a certain variety in the gameplay. Yes, in Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, frequent reboots cannot be avoided, especially for those who are not familiar with this genre, or have already forgotten, but this is quite normal. In addition, you don't have to sit with a stopwatch and draw diagrams, you don't have to make plans. Shadow Tactics is not too "hardcore", but it will not make a fool either - everything is within reason. And there won't be any infamous autosaves, hints, or other facilitating details.

→ Hayato and Yuki are two of the most useful heroes who can solve a lot of problems facing a team.

Also, the guards also cause some difficulties. The bottom line is that the guards constantly stand and patrol the territory so as to control the maximum size of the territory. Plus, the guards are different and therefore may react differently to your actions. For example, ordinary soldiers will enthusiastically try to be nice to the raccoon, or they will diligently search for where Yuki's melody comes from. Therefore, it is only a pleasure to “shoot” such soldiers. Another thing is soldiers in straw hats, carrying guns, or officers who practically do not react to anything. The most that these soldiers will do is look in the direction of the noise. So it's the most difficult with them.

There are also samurai who are surprisingly very strong and good in close combat: kill them in a duel, or only Mugen can from behind, the rest will only achieve a tough death in battle. It is impossible to take a samurai with a trap, a shot, a hairpin in the side, and they reveal their disguise as easy as shelling pears. If necessary, you will even have to work in pairs to neutralize such a strong enemy: one shoots, thereby knocking the enemy down, after which the second plunges his blade into him. The last option is to call Tokumu, but only his bomb is extremely loud, no matter how it becomes even more difficult in this case.

→ Rumor has it that the samurai in Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun came straight from the Underworld to remind all players of the delights of a hell of a game!

In general, if you disturb the guards, additional outfits of enemies creep out from everywhere, so without a plentiful stabbing, you will not be able to go further the mission. And it is extremely difficult to kill all the enemies: in Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, you cannot, as in Desperados or Commandos, sit down somewhere around the corner in order to skillfully shoot enemy foes. The shortage of cartridges and the huge abundance of sentries gives a bleak prospect with regards to such a plan.

Shadow Tactics is a hardcore tactical stealth game set in Japan around the Edo period.

Take control of a team of deadly specialists and sneak in the shadows between dozens of enemies. Choose your approach when infiltrating mighty castles, snowy mountain monasteries or hidden forest camps. Set traps, poison your opponents or completely avoid enemy contact.

The group is composed of very different personalities. Working together as a team seems impossible at first. Yet over the course of many missions, trust is won and friendships are made. The characters develop their own dynamic and each member will have to face their own personal demons.

One of the leaders of this team is Hayato, an agile ninja, who clears the way through his enemies silently, with his sword and shuriken. Samurai Mugen prefers a more powerful approach and can defeat more fiends at one time, but thus also forfeiting flexibility. Aiko is a master of camouflage when she distracts enemies disguised as a Geisha. And the street child Yuki places traps and decoys enemies towards their deadly fate. The mysterious marksman Takuma however, relies on his sniper rifle and takes care of the enemies from a distance.

The player has to carefully evaluate his options in order to master the challenging missions: how will the characters behave as a team? Which one is best equipped for each task? How can they best master the given missions? Come up with your own ingenious tactics to vanquish enemies and complete missions.

• Play as five completely different characters with their unique skill set
• Conquer seemingly impossible challenges where you are outnumbered ten to one
• Find dozens of ways to take out your opponents the way you want
• Jump from roof to roof and climb large buildings to attack the enemy from above
• Explore beautiful environments of ancient Japan in the Edo era
• Choose from three difficulty levels to match your skill

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun- a game of a unique genre. In essence, this is a "real-time tactic" - the same as the Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines and its continuation, as well Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive... This genre is unique because all the games mentioned are the brightest, but almost the only representatives of it.

From his main task Blades of the Shogun did a masterful job: it reminded us of games in which a small squad of experienced warriors performs dangerous tasks secretly from the enemy. However, the novelty should be appreciated not only for this. Among other things, Shadow Tactics is a project that you don't want to scold at all.

Crouching tiger

Japan, Edo period. The country is ruled by the powerful Tokugawa clan. The economy is developing rapidly, the population is growing, medieval civil strife is coming to naught, the "golden" age of Japanese literature is approaching.

It is at this wonderful time that the events of Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun take place. It can be seen that the employees Mimimi Productions love and respect the history of Japan - this is reflected in the attention to detail. The language in the dialogues, the topics for the guards' chatter, the device of the weapon, the architecture - everything corresponds to the era.

Locations cause even more delight. Down with the boring military bases of the Second World War and the prairie of the Wild West! Welcome to the rice fields, to the bamboo forests and to the foot of the mountain, on the top of which an impregnable fortress was built. The levels are really good, you want to explore them. Maybe this is not always necessary for the passage, but, believe me, your conscience will not allow you to bypass some majestic temple on the hill and calmly complete the mission.

In Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, it's easy to stare at the scenery and miss a hidden hole.

But you shouldn't expect a serious plot from Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. The Edo period is rich in important historical events, but they are not related to the adventures of the main characters. The local history is by no means devoid of charm, and there was a place in it for unexpected twists, however, with a pen and a notebook in hand, follow the development of the plot, as when watching a TV series HBO, you are unlikely to become.

However, the lack of a strong story in a game like Shadow Tactics is hardly a drawback. The focus here is on the gameplay, and Blades of the Shogun just doesn't have any problems with it.

Hidden Dragon

Shadow Tactics heroes are assassins for hire. And each has unique skills. So, the head of the squad, the ninja Hayato, hides in the shadows and, at the right time, strikes enemies with a katana and shuriken. Samurai Mugen in a tense battle can single-handedly cope with several opponents at once, but heavy armor will not allow him to climb onto the roof. The adorable Aiko distracts enemies by dressing up as a geisha, while the agile Yuuki creates traps. Another member of the squad, aged Takuma, is a sniper.

The main task in Blades of the Shogun is to correctly combine the skills of the characters. If you carefully look around the level, come up with a suitable plan and implement it wisely, everything will go like clockwork - the "tactical" mechanism works like clockwork.

All opponents have a field of view. The main thing for the heroes is not to get into the green sector.

The most difficult, awkward and not worthy of a real ninja path is always in sight - you will notice it first of all. But getting to the cherished goal in Shadow Tactics can be done in a variety of ways, and scouring in search of workarounds is a separate pleasure. The local locations are real puzzles, and to solve them you need to use everything that can be found on the level: for example, a secret hole or a bell that attracts the attention of enemies. Jumping from roof to roof is also in the order of things - after all, we play as ninjas and samurai.

Most often, locations in Shadow Tactics consist of several tiers. This significantly complicates the task - you have to keep track of those opponents that are, for example, on the second floor.

But even with a well thought out plan, fooling opponents is not easy. They watch each other and raise the alarm if one of the colleagues disappears from sight. They pay attention to the footprints, examine the bushes (no kidding!) And generally do everything to find a squad of hired killers. Do not forget that there are many enemies: there are dexterous ones, there are strong ones, and there are those with whom it is better not to meet at all - "s-s-eat".

* * *

Today, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is one of a kind. Even if there were enough flaws in it, we would still, albeit with reservations, recommend it to anyone who yearned for the series Commandos... However, there is generally nothing to scold Blades of the Shogun for. Unworn setting, polished gameplay, colorful heroes - a game of piecework!

The commercial success of indie games has allowed many niche genres to return, including tactical projects, most of which today are based on a turn-based combat system. Developers from Mimimi Productions decided to remind everyone that tactics can also be in real time.

Combines elements of stealth action and tactical games in real time, evoking fond memories of the classics of the genre in the face of the series Commandos, which was popular in the late nineties - early two thousandth years. At the same time, the project surprises with the chosen setting. Action Blades of the shogun takes place in medieval Japan during the early Edo period. You start the game as a ninja named Hayato, who must sneak into the castle during a siege.

The screensavers do not indulge in cinematography: the camera simply shows the heroes standing opposite each other. But despite the weak animation and simple staging, it is interesting to follow the development of the plot. The story is quite rich, and in the end it will delight you with an unexpected twist, which negates the general simplicity and unpretentiousness of the direction.

The training mission is loyal to the player and teaches basic mechanics neatly. Following the traditions of the espionage genre, the enemy's field of view is indicated by a cone, but even after hitting it, you have time to go unnoticed. If detected, the enemy will start an attack, enemies from all over the area will run to the noise and it will be very difficult to survive in such a battle.

A little later, the hero will be joined by the powerful samurai Oshiro, the young thief Yuki and the old sniper Takume, along with their trained tanuki. Each character has its own strengths and weaknesses, as well as unique abilities. For example, Takume moves slowly, but can eliminate targets from afar. Since he is firing his musket, it makes a lot of noise. In turn, ninja Hayato is the quietest of the heroes, can eliminate targets with kunai and quickly climbs onto the top.

The characters complement each other perfectly. The game even provides the ability to select several teams at once for different heroes, and then give a command and they will begin to perform the specified actions synchronously.

It is not necessary to kill enemies. They can be distracted, put to sleep, or trivial to get around. Each decision has its consequences: if the enemy is simply knocked out, he will quickly come to his senses. In this case, one must not allow anyone to see the body lying on the floor. Soldiers who have been killed or knocked out must be hidden - and this is another interesting mechanic. Since Mugen is a large warrior, he can quickly carry one body or two at once, but with an average speed. Miniature Yuuki is only able to slowly drag one enemy along the ground, and the old man cannot bear anyone at all. If the body is noticed by enemies or civilians, then an alarm will be raised, because of which new opponents will run to this point. If you don't hide well, then our heroes will definitely be hunted down and killed.

The levels are built in such a way that the player can come up with their own options for passing tasks. Locations always have several routes and ways to eliminate targets, including using weapons. An accident can happen immediately to a group of enemies. For example, they may be crushed by a freight carriage, or a huge stone will fall on them.

Enemies react not only to noise, but also to tracks that remain in the snow. And that can be a problem. And not only for you, but also for opponents, who in this way can really be lured into a trap.

With its deep variability and non-linearity, the game can resemble a series Hitman, adjusted for the fact that we control the whole team, and not one character. You can lure targets into Fresh air to eliminate them with a sniper, distract the servants, poison tea or set a huge bull on opponents.

Replay missions different ways c - a very exciting lesson. The developers have competently approached the presentation of the gameplay features and skills of the heroes, combining them in pairs in the first half of the game. Thus, the player gradually gets used to the heroes and does not spray his attention on everyone at once.

The game uses Unity and suffers from long initial loadings of levels. Fortunately, this only happens once per episode, since reloading (for example, after saving) already takes a few seconds.

The project does not indulge in rich detail, but in isometric view, the neat architecture of the locations still leaves a pleasant impression. The only pity is that the characters look very simple.

A fun and well done game of a rare genre that fans will definitely love Commandos and to all fans of tactical games. If you have already passed XCOM 2 and Mario + Rabbids then be sure to try this project too.

• Translation

Last year, German developer Mimimi Productions brought a lot of attention to its real-time tactical stealth game Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, inspired by older titles like Desperados and Commandos.

Shadow Tactics has an intriguing design (see). It was a huge success for Mimimi - despite the fact that the company nearly collapsed during the release process. You can read more about how this happened (and what lessons the developers learned) in this honest post-mortem of the game, written by fellow founders of Mimimi Johannes Roth and Dominik Abe.

About a year ago, Mimimi was still little known. Our previous 3D action adventure game The Last Tinker: City of Colors performed well, but did not attract a large audience.

By December 2016, our biggest dreams have come true: Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, our declaration of love for Commandos and Desperados finally came out and won the recognition of the players and the press.

At the same time, we were almost bankrupt and had already laid off most of the team. We no longer had the money to survive another month.

In this post-mortem, the two founders of Mimimi, Dominik Abe (creative director) and Johannes Roth (managing director), will elaborate on where they were right and where they were (horribly) wrong.


We have been creating games and suffering because of this since 2011.

What did we do right

1) Put everything on the line, achieving high quality

Mouth: Shadow tactics was released on December 6, 2016, the day before the German Developer Awards, where we won awards in as many as four categories, including Best German Game and Best studio". Around the same time, the first reviews began to appear. The scores and verdicts exceeded our wildest expectations: an 86 rating from GameStar, 92 points from PC Gamer, even Rock Paper Shotgun and Kotaku praised us. Streamers and let players have recorded hundreds of hours of gameplay. In that month alone, we sold over 60,000 copies, double our biggest predictions. On Steam, we now have 98% positive reviews, which seems surreal to us.
The entire team, including interns and freelancers, at the German Developer Award 2016.

A year earlier, in December 2015, we could not predict such a result. The development process took only twelve months and we just got to the alpha version. In parallel with the creation of all the content, we constantly worked on the "vertical slice" of the game - the level that will later become the fifth mission - "Assassination of Mr. Yabu"; it was always as polished as possible and served as a quality bar for the rest of the game.

With the release of the alpha version, we realized that the "vertical slice" is actually much more beautiful than we imagined the game at the very beginning - which means that it will take much longer to create. We've learned a lot in those first twelve months: about the development tools, about the game itself, and how to make the graphics look the best possible.

In-studio gameplay recording, initial pitch for publisher

In-studio gameplay recording, "vertical cut" after 21 months of development

We realized that it was impossible to go back to the pitch graph, but the new level of quality for the whole game obviously did not fit into our original schedule. At this stage, we began to invest all the company's financial reserves in the project in order to extend the production period for another three months. Our publisher Daedalic Entertainment was able to stretch the deadline, allowed all planned DLC levels to be canceled, and funded another, fourth month. It is worth noting in parentheses that Daedalic's experience as a quality developer (for example, the Deponia series) helped us a lot in this situation, because they have already encountered the same problems many times. The scheduling change not only meant better graphics, but also greatly increased the dynamism of each level.

At that time, we made the decision to end the game. the best way- having agreed both within the team and with Daedalic itself. I told the team very clearly that we must "put everything on the line." If unsuccessful, it will be Game Over for Mimimi. But for us there was no other choice, we were ruled by our passion and love. And while our contributions have paid off excellently, including the highest Metacritic score for a German game since Crysis 2 (2011), the work has been a heavy burden on the entire team and we definitely won't want to experience that again. As you might guess, we will tell you more about this in the section “What we did wrong”.

2) Revived a dead genre

Abe: Making a remake of everyone's favorite game is every developer's dream. In 2008, when I started studying game design, I spoke with Moritz Wagner (now he is the lead game designer at Mimimi) that Commandos is one of my all-time favorite gaming franchises (another is Little big adventure; if anything, I'm ready to take on it). Moritz at that time recorded excellent rap videos in which he dressed as a ninja, so in my mind there was an image of ninja-style gameplay Commandos... I told Moritz about this and we laughed: "Ha, one day, when we become important and successful, we can create such a game." But it turned out that this was no joke. In 2014, we talked about the idea " Commandos with the ninja "at Daedalic and were soon signed to publish the game. Now we have a real chance to revive the deadly real-time tactics genre.

I want to explain why it seems to me that we have achieved success:

I'm a big fan of the genre. As a fan and designer, I longed for a spiritual successor to these games: the experience of being in a strangely realistic place that breathes life; sneak among countless enemies and "shoot" them, one after another, creating the most cunning plans, making risky moves, and sometimes relying on sheer luck and reflexes. I was very confident that I could create a game that fans would love, and often during production I had an instinctive feeling that the game would work. Of course, this does not mean that I was always right. Transmitting these feelings to other team members and implementing them in choosing aspects of game design has often been a difficult and time-consuming process. But overall, knowing how the game should feel with an eye to its spiritual predecessors helped us a lot. It was much easier than doing something from scratch. It's also worth noting that Daedalic, while giving us regular feedback, never had any creative control over our game - we were actually free to pursue our wishes.

But enough talk about feelings; let's take a look at the analytical side of things. During the preproduction stage, we analyzed the evolution of the genre and looked for concepts that remain unique today. We have often compared the first game in the series with its own sequel Commandos 2: Men of Courage, the most critically acclaimed representative of the genre.

2001 Pyro Studios Game Commandos 2: Men of Courage

Both are stealth-focused, real-time tactical games set in a WWII environment. You control a group of soldiers, narrow specialists, carrying out sabotage missions in enemy territory. Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines Introduced us to a team of player-controlled characters with a highly developed skill set that depend on each other and force the player to combine their unique skills. The game is somewhat like chess - you have a very limited set of actions and strict rules, but they provide endless possibilities. V Commandos 2 there was a more realistic and open approach that gave the player much more skills and opportunities. The game removed artificial restrictions (for example, in the first part, only one character could use a specific type of weapon) and added new features (collecting enemy equipment, etc.). So, since judging by the reviews of the players and the press Commandos 2 turned out to be better, it seemed obvious that it was worth choosing her as the main source of inspiration for creating a spiritual heir. But we didn’t do it.

It seemed to us that Commandos 2"Diluted" the uniqueness of the series created in the first part, turning it from a chess-like game into a more realistic simulation with added structural complexity. For example, by adding more possible actions, the developers made the game more difficult to learn. We didn't want to create more depth of gameplay this way. Therefore, we decided on the first pillar of game design - "Creating depth without adding structural complexity" - which we aimed to adhere to in all aspects of game design. The "realistic" approach taken by Commandos 2, also made all player characters a little too strong, which damaged the unique aspect team play created earlier - limiting realism for the sake of balancing gameplay.

Let's look at an example that allowed players to dishonestly exploit the systems introduced in the second part: a diver in Commandos 2 had a very powerful knife throwing skill that was balanced by the need to pick up the knife after throwing. The Green Beret also had a knife, but he could not throw it. Due to the added inventory system, the player could hand over the Green Beret knife to the diver, transforming it into a powerful killing machine armed with two knives, while the normally powerful Green Beret was demoted to an outside observer.

V Shadow tactics Once again, we focused on a limited and hard-coded set of non-transferable skills for each character, and designed the game in such a way that the skill of each character was strong when combined with the skills of other team members, while remaining effective in its own right. In the end, by focusing on the first game of the genre and transforming it in a different direction from its successors, we were able to revive the genre in a way that feels unique and fresh today.

3) Creation of a new brand in an old genre

Abe: the revival of the "dead" genre is often associated with the reworking of an already existing brand. For example, this was the case with XCOM: Enemy Unknown which brought the turn-based tactics genre back to the AAA scale. With no funds, no capabilities, no copyright in the real-time tactical stealth genre, we were forced to reinvent our own brand. This had its own risks: fans might not like the new game due to the lack of important elements of their favorite projects - the entourage, characters, art style, maybe just a big name, from the mention of which they feel pleased. We had to invent something new on all counts.

As for the surroundings, we took a risk and drastically changed the scenery, moving the game to Edo Japan. We were confident in this decision because we felt how critical it was for players to match the surroundings and gameplay so that they never feel unnatural. The image of a secretly moving ninja, slowly destroying an entire army, can be considered even more convincing than the image of a WWII soldier, who is easier to associate with loud shooting. The stereotype of the stealthy ninja is so strong that we were convinced from the start that it was perfect for the genre.

Choice of art style Shadow tactics we also matched the new surroundings because we used Japanese ink drawings as our inspiration. This allowed us to create a unique image instantly recognizable in any screenshot. This is what we aimed to achieve when developing a new style that was easier to achieve with stylized rather than photorealistic graphics. How much was it the right decision for the genre, we'll explain below in the section “What We Done Wrong: Style versus Genre”.

But if everything is so tied to the new surroundings and ninjas, then why should the game be called Shadow tactics with just a small subtitle reference Blades of the shogun- We didn't even have the word "Ninja" in the title? The point was that Daedalic and I wanted to think more broadly and create a brand that could be used in more than just one setting. Nowadays, this strategy is very common - remember Assassin's Creed, Total war etc. For a small studio, such a move is quite risky, because it often means that the name of the game will be too vague. But we loved the idea of ​​exploring different environments, and now we have a brand to do that. So even if we fail to create Shadow Tactics: Legions of Rome, then we just have one less problem.

4) Transferring genre to console

Abe: from the outset, an important part of our plan was to bring the genre to consoles. I tried before us Commandos 2, more or less successfully porting the mouse and keyboard controls directly. We were fairly confident that we could provide better gameplay on modern consoles, but in terms of design, the biggest challenge was correct setting control from the gamepad. Console performance was another major issue.

From the beginning, we were convinced that we wanted to develop controls for PC and consoles in parallel to make it equally good on both platforms. At the same time, it has always been obvious that by no means should our main platform, the PC, be allowed to suffer from potential controller control limitations. During the design and implementation process, it became more and more clear to us that testing the capabilities with respect to control from the controller helped us identify the necessary parts of the mechanics and make them easier to use.

Example: after killing an enemy, the player most often has to pick up a corpse to hide it. In our first design, killing and raising the body required two different user actions. But when prototyping this function for a gamepad, we realized that these commands should be performed in one action - a long press to kill and then raise the body. Of course, we also implemented this function for mouse and keyboard control - to do the same. you can hold down the Ctrl key (up and interact key).

As far as the technical aspects of the console version are concerned, our biggest fear was issues with frame rates and fast save / load times. Shadow tactics was our first console project, so we had almost no experience with consoles. In addition, the Unity 3D game engine did not have a very good reputation on consoles at the time. But since we have been working with Unity for the last seven years, we could not lose our skills, moving to the engine with the best reputation on consoles. For a while, we developed versions for PC and consoles in parallel, and constantly checked whether it was possible to achieve at least acceptable performance on consoles. However, at a certain stage, we decided to release versions not at the same time, because we needed all the resources to release the PC version.

After completing the PC gold master disc, we immediately went back to the console version and started testing builds again - with terrible results. Some levels reached a constant 15 fps in zones in which the player had to spend about 30 minutes; for example, this was the case in the initial area of ​​Matsuyama City. With the time of "quick" save / load, everything was also bad, saving took up to 10 seconds, and loading - 50-60 seconds. The task was clear: we needed to at least double the frame rate, speed up saving by about 5 times, and loading by about 20. And all this without reducing the quality of graphics. A typical "kill me" moment in the life of a game developer.

Matsuyama City level: one of the worst speed scenes on consoles)

We've improved save / load times by pre-generating the serialization code in code files and caching whatever is possible at runtime. The download was still not fast enough because it took about 15 seconds to recreate the GameObject and add their components on the Unity side. As a result, we managed to get around this problem by dynamically creating GameObject templates containing all the necessary components and cloning them. The final results even surprised me a little: in the worst case, saving now took 1-2 seconds, and loading - 3 seconds.

We have taken two important steps to optimize the overall frame rate. First, we independently grouped the models into large chunks that approximated the screen size in the perspective of our camera in order to reduce the number of draw calls and clipping operations. Secondly, we made the scene hierarchy flatter, which is very important for moving objects, in order to avoid multiple matrix calculations. With a thousand more optimizations, we achieved stable 30 fps on PS4 and XBox One. In addition, William Armstrong and John Elliot of Spotlight Team Unity helped us a lot with the console and custom builds of Unity, helping us meet the team's goals. Many thanks to them!

By rewriting and optimizing our part of the code so that the engine needs to execute as much as possible less work, we were able to improve overall performance. We've learned an important lesson - only you yourself know how your game works and what you need. Commercial engines like Unity do a lot more work because they aren't designed for any particular game or genre, so it's up to you to optimize the load on the engine.

In a talk at Unite Europe 2017 by our CTO Frieder Melke and gameplay programmer Philip Wittershagen, we talked about this in more detail.

As a result, we have achieved success and developed on Unity game who worked with high speed on Xbox One and PS4 without sacrificing graphics quality. Therefore, we are very happy and satisfied with the console versions, which received the same high marks as the PC version.

5) Marketing the game, trying to reach out to hardcore fans

Mouth: Unlike our previous game The last tinker, we knew exactly what the target audience should be Shadow tactics... The game was supposed to be challenging from the start and attract real fans of the genre. However, marketing Shadow tactics it still turned out to be quite difficult, because during the production process we faced three serious problems:

1. Trying to reach out to hardcore fans: Those who loved the old games of this genre are now much older, harder to reach, and may not be playing games at all.
2. Trying to reach a new audience: The resurrection of a dead and forgotten genre meant that young players didn't know anything about it at all. In addition, Commandos and Desperados sold exceptionally well in Europe, but many gamers in the US (one of the most important markets) have never heard of them.
3. "Selling" the visuals: Given the fixed camera perspective and real-time gameplay, it was very difficult to create a cinematic feel in trailers or gameplay cutscenes. Games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle have taken great steps in the right direction to overcome the limitations of their genre (active camera angles, lots of cutscenes), but after thinking about similar concepts in our real-time gameplay, we realized that this would not work or even distract players. In addition, we were a much smaller team with a very limited budget, so the graphics were only sharp enough in the normal camera perspective.

We have put in a lot of effort to solve all of these problems. We think the following worked:

At events such as PAX and gamescom, we often received feedback from newcomers to the genre that our game was “isometric Metal Gear solid "Or" hardcore Assassin's Creed with several characters ". It was oversimplified, but we knew we could never compete with these games or reach out to their audiences. On the other hand, we also quickly realized that almost all gamers who gave Shadow tactics Chance, even though initially shy, quickly fell in love with the game. This happened all the time at these events, so we felt a huge difference compared to our previous projects.

This convinced our director of communications, Dennis Husak, to insist on releasing a demo: the game had to sell itself. We had to trust the quality we achieved and let people try it for themselves. No trailer will have the same impact, so in order to take that route, we made a free demo the backbone of our ad campaign.

"Play the demo!" was our main motto even after the release of the game.

We released the demo on November 21, 2016. Thanks to this, the number of wishlists for our game quickly increased from 15 thousand to 40 thousand, just two weeks before release. For reference: the first 15 thousand wishes were collected in almost seven months. The day before the release, the game was already in 150 thousand lists, and a year later - in about 700 thousand. We didn’t run any pre-order campaign, so we felt that all the pre-release wishlists were much more valuable - that is, it was a “Buy right after release” signal rather than “Wait for discounts start”. We have sold over 400,000 copies for desktop platforms and the demo has been downloaded over 160,000 times.

Suddenly, the game's community has become much more vibrant. Our AMA on Reddit was a huge success, and even the Live Stream on Facebook collected about 31 thousand users according to FB statistics, which means it was all worth the effort. Releasing a demo was the best way to solve all three problems, and the community loved it that we released it in 2016. Moreover, every time someone asked about the gameplay, someone from the community would definitely advise you to simply download the demo we have posted. We have publicly stated that we need everyone's support in spreading information about our unknown game. Thus, thanks to our very first fans, we managed to reach many of the original Commandos players.

For the record, the decision to release a demo was not an easy step. Dennis had to convince all of us of this idea, because I was afraid that one level would be enough for players, after which they would go to the next AAA game with a price of $ 10. Experience in the gaming industry told us that releasing a demo was bad for sales, so it was actually a big leap of faith for us.

What did we do wrong

1) put everything on the line, almost becoming bankrupt

Mouth: As stated earlier, the release Shadow tactics became a dream come true: we created a successful game with grades we never dreamed of.

However, shortly before the release of the game, we canceled two subsequent projects, were almost on the verge of bankruptcy, and half of the team, including the longest-serving employees, had already been fired - we were saving money to release the console version with the smallest possible team.

While a success story that puts everything on the line sounds romantic in some ways, it was actually a terrible experience. And we should have foreseen it: by adding four more months to the project schedule, we were able to make the game much better, but we exhausted all our savings. When we realized that our backup plans for new projects were not working as planned, we realized that everything was going to hell. We have fully invested in Shadow tactics, so we didn't prepare new pitches, and we had nothing to offer new partners. In addition, they, of course, expected the release of the game and SteamSpy data for several weeks before deciding to sign the project.

This put us in a terrible position: the team stood on stage in front of the entire German game industry, they were happy and at the same time understood that this could be the last month of the studio's life.

Partly due to luck, partly due to the release of a decent game, we were able to talk to the publishers after the release and none of them decided to take advantage of the situation and did not try to force us to make a bad deal. The negotiations, which usually take months, were quick and fair. As a result, to our surprise, we had to choose one of the projects, for any of which we would gladly undertake. I clearly remember how I was traveling by train on December 23, right the day before Christmas, and wrote last letter team, informing them that the contract has been signed and we are safe for a while.

Mimimi after getting rid of all the heavy paperwork.

When we returned to work in early January, we ritually destroyed all papers that were in any way connected with the potential death of our studio. It sounds fun, but I will say for myself: this whole situation was weighing heavily on me for the next six months. Even as we returned to normal life, I experienced stress and sleep problems that took several weeks to realize.

Mimimi has always been a safe haven of sorts, a company that has never fired anyone due to cut funds. We have always had a budget for at least the next three months. It was the first time we felt so unstable, and we knew about it for several months. Change workload without increasing budget from reliable source was a risky and bad decision, because the chaos that hit us was much stronger than expected. I consider it my personal mistake that I did not secure subsequent projects with special terms of contracts. I usually do this, but personal reasons and because of the trust in people, this was not done that time.

2) Lack of resources to develop new content

Mouth: As mentioned above, during the production process we had to cancel all planned levels for the DLC in order to fully focus on the main game, which was the right decision for the initial release. But we are a small team, so when we signed an agreement on a new project, we did not have the resources left to work on the current one. Things like releasing patches or adding new languages ​​have already become a huge burden. While many fans asked for additional content and we'd love to release it, we just didn't get the chance.

There were two serious reasons for this:

1. Implementation is incredibly expensive. The game features 13 different languages ​​and fully voiced dialogue in Japanese and English. We would have had to translate the DLC into all of these languages ​​and invest heavily in order to use the same people for voice acting. Another investment would be testing and doing full quality control (this genre is hard to test due to the sandbox-like level structure). Though Shadow tactics generated income, we were not even sure if we could even compensate for investments.
2. Our players and team members Mimimi would expect the DLC to be at the same quality level as the base game. This would mean that our most experienced employees would have to participate in the development, instead of, say, outsourcing it or hiring new staff. But everyone was already engaged in a new project, from which much more was expected, and we are not fans of crunches, and we have not invented cloning devices yet. Therefore, in order to ensure that our new game does not disappoint anyone, we had to focus on one big task.

Although the financial aspect played a role, the most important obstacle was the lack of free time. We would never dare to release mediocre DLC just to make money. Probably, it was worth releasing the DLC immediately after the release, but looking back is always easier than predicting, and at that moment it simply did not happen.

3) Violation of the unspoken rules of consoles

Abe: Porting the classic PC genre with mouse and keyboard controls is a really tough challenge that some great games like Diablo 3 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown... When designing the control scheme from the controller, we tried to take into account the habits of the console players as fully as possible, because we did not want to strain them with a new genre and new controls. However, this is not entirely possible, because some systems, such as cameras with free movement, rotation and zoom are rarely found on consoles, and there are no standards for control from the controller. In the end, we came up with this control scheme on PS4:
Shadow Tactics PS4 controls layout.

There are also "natural" conventions, such as a "square" for killing and a "cross" for jumping; there are other common controls like the side buttons L1 for the skill wheel and L2 for aiming. There is also pressing the right R2 trigger to activate a special camera mode, which is completely unusual for players, because this button is usually used for shooting, speeding up or other important gameplay actions.

So why did we choose the trigger? Because we needed a button that allowed control of the stick when pressed. Hence, the only options were the side buttons; besides, all the other buttons were busy with more familiar actions. Obviously, this was contrary to the expectations of console players, and perhaps even more so because the rest of the control scheme adhered to "console rules". On the other hand, we're still not sure if it was worth tying a complex new feature like camera control to a button that players are used to doing other things. On the other hand, we believe that it was the right decision, because the player will become more aware of the presence of this function this way.

However, other problems were obvious: we missed the opportunity to talk more about the camera control possibilities in the tutorial, creating it in the same space as for the PC version. In most cases, this was perfectly normal; perhaps this was the reason for our mistake - we overlooked that large parts of the tutorial should be different depending on the management and target audience. We only changed the displayed text and images, and some parts of the structure of the tutorial should have changed as well.

In addition, we did not perform a detailed gaming test for console-only users. Players accustomed to playing on both PC and consoles may have very different expectations from players playing exclusively on consoles. It is likely that the fact that most PC players were pleasantly surprised by the ability to fully play with a controller did not allow us to collect more detailed feedback.

In the end, nothing terrible happened and the console audience reacted favorably to us, because it was something new and the players did not have examples of other games that solved the same problems in much better ways. But we still think there are many ways to further fine-tune the game, especially with regard to controls.

4) Style versus genre

Abe: As I said before, we always strive to create a unique graphic style in our games that makes them instantly recognizable and memorable. For Shadow tactics We originally took inspiration from traditional Japanese ink drawings and tried to create our own style, combining them with elements of comic style and canvas-like materials. This style turned out to be amazing and seemed to fit well with our art team, already producing unique graphics. The last tinker in papier-mâché style.

After showing off our first graphical prototypes, we received a lot of feedback that the game was too similar to a mobile game. We were developing the game for PC / consoles, so of course it didn't suit us, but at the same time it was quite ironic because in the first pitch Shadow tactics was supposed to go to mobile, and some of the graphic ideas survived. As a result, they initially influenced the graphical style of the PC / console version.

Our first graphic prototype, 2014

We agreed with the feedback and started to develop a less abstract style that we felt needed a richer and more detailed world. The final style development process was unexpectedly long and then led to a longer production phase.

When we discussed the choice of surroundings, it was very important for us to perfectly match the genre of real-time tactics, but we did not consider art style... If you look at other tactical / strategy games, most of them use a photorealistic style, including in older games Commandos and Desperados... Today we assume that our stylized graphics instantly scared off many hardcore tactical fans who didn't even have time to take a closer look at Shadow tactics... We received only a few comments that the graphics were too "comic", but we never realized how important it was. We also missed the chance to do AB testing early in production to determine a style that would appeal to most real-time tactics fans.

On a more personal level of choice and taste, we are quite happy with the resulting graphics and have heard a lot of positive feedback. And trying to create a realistic style was not really a good option for our team because it didn't fit the team's taste and it was difficult to achieve with the efforts of a small team.

5) Game Marketing: Still Couldn't Reach Hardcore Fans

Mouth: Despite the pretty successful release, we still had a hard time reaching people - even with all the great reviews and press attention. Here's what we ended up with differently than intended:

A few weeks after the release of the game, someone from Germany visited our studio and told me that we had released an amazing game, but he only heard about it two weeks before the release and our marketing was very bad. I replied: “We've been featured several times in all German gaming media, both digital and paper, from the announcement of development to release. We were on some of the largest channels of German let players and streamers. Even the foreign press, like Rock Paper Shotgun and Kotaku, spoke about us. "

But that person did not use any of the channels mentioned, despite being a gamer and part of our target audience. We didn't really know how to get to him, other than appearing on his favorite channels, which were too exotic, and we couldn't afford to post posters at bus stops. When we showed the game at events after the release, the same problem arose: we thought we were reaching the audience well, but many potential buyers had never even heard of our game.

And although the demo helped us a lot, many gamers did not know about its existence. We found a lot of people on Steam who weren't even aware of the download option, possibly due to the strange location of the button outside of the game's purchase area. There are still players who are waiting for a serious discount to test the game on their machines, not suspecting that the demo is just one click away from them. On PlayStation 4, our game is not even shown in the demo category, because we decided to publish a trial version instead. In essence, it is similar to the demo for PC, but allows you to unlock full version inside a running game without loading a new application. It is very user-friendly and not a problem, but it gave us a bad position in the store.

Faced with the situation "how can we sell the game, presenting it in a cinematic, attractive form", we tried very hard to show something that explains the genre to beginners. Our preview trailer aimed to create a cinematic take on the actual visuals of the game, but people complained about the animation and graphics.

In the release trailer, we tried to go down the path of pre-rendered graphics in order to attract a larger audience, but as a result, we failed. A second, pre-rendered and more stylized trailer for the console's release has suffered the same fate, and even worse. At the same time, compared to the development budget, this was a very significant investment. If you watched the video, you immediately realized that six months after the release, we actually did not have a trailer with real gameplay. It was released shortly before the console release because no one had the resources to do it before. We thought the first trailer was our chance to really talk about how Shadow Tactics works and is played. In hindsight, I think we needed to focus primarily on the gameplay trailer and just come to terms with the fact that the engine of the game would not be able to create a blockbuster trailer. To make a splash, pre-rendered trailers have to be huge and expensive, or an incredibly smart yet inexpensive idea that will make the trailer go viral.

Summarize

There are probably hundreds of thousands of people in the world who might like our game, but they simply do not know about its existence. And, frankly, we don't know how to get through to them. Those players who hesitate may be intimidated by the graphic style, the title, or the fact that we lost a lot of time before the release on consoles, or we may not even be able to grasp the reason for this.

On the other hand, most of the players in Shadow tactics very happy with the game on all platforms. And all the parties involved made money, which is important, because this is how we proved that the genre was profitable. Not only is it worth reviving, but it will also allow us to create something else in this genre! And we are very happy about that.

Given the success of the game, it's hard to say if it was the right decision to invest all that money and resources at the risk of everything. We can only say that we do not want to repeat this and will try to find another solution, of course, making sure that the game does not suffer. Add tags