We are approaching the end of Dare to be Digital with 2 weeks left so this is going to be the last version and it’s planned to last until 8th August. During the next weeks we want to finish polishing the game working in:

– Adding the healer and the trapper as playable units. This incorporation will help the player to have a proper feeling of building his own army. Right now, with just 4 units per team all the battles end with the same units and this can make the player feel a bit disconnected with his army. With the new units and maintaining the 4 time layers we want the battles to end with different armies and let the player specialize and build his own army hopefully making him more connected to it.

– Changing the GUI: healthbars, selector flags and change all the texts with a custom font to make them more eye candy.

– Include a tutorial to show players the game mechanics if they need to.

– Making victory animations to get the player feel rewarded when winning.

– Adding a summary at the end of the battle with useful information about how the battle has developed. This has two reasons: on the one hand it gives rewards to both players: you can be the winner but not being the one that has defeated more units and on the other hand this helps both players understand what they have been doing well and what they have to improve so if you lose you get useful information that will help you to master IsoChronous.

– Working on a dynamic camera for the last replay so we can show a more cinematic and epic final replay to make the players want to watch and enjoy the whole battle.

3 weeks have passed since previous post, it could seem a lot, but we´ve been working hard all this time in the version entitled pandora. Also there has been a lot of work in the trailer with all the team helping to finish it.

So let´s see what has version pandora brought so far:

– Level changed by pandora, a floating island in the middle of the sky with a river that divides the battlefield.

– Added interactive environment and props: trees, caravan, sign posts, barrels, butterflies, flowers and seagulls so that everything is more alive and gives feedback making the player  feel better when attacking.

– Camera travelling introducing IsoChronia and both kings so you can watch the scene and  the kings making them a bit more noticeable (still not obvious that the goal is having other player´s king with less health in the fourth time layer).

– Sound fx for most of the interactions. Some of the sounds have been used to help player understand the game mechanics. For example the king says messages like: “Protect the king” and “Attack” to empathize what you are suppose to do. Also as they keep giving orders it gives the information of being important for the team.

– GUI redesign to include: small flags on top of the screen to give information about the total number of time layers in a battle, indicators of attack, health and speed to give information about the different units. The style of the GUI elements has been changed to be more integrated with the game: flags, towers and banners have been used. Time indicator is a needle clock to make more obvious that it is indicating time. When the time layer finishes the clock enlarges and is centered facilitating the player to understand that everything rewinds and that there is a clock.

As you can see, in general, we´ve worked a lot to improve player experience and making the battlefield stand out. Also the GUI has been redesigned to help player understand the game mechanics.

All this changes have been possible thanks to mentors which have been very useful testers. Also we would like to thank those other dare teams who have had time to play IsoChronous and have given their thoughts to improve it. Last but not least, the kids from the focus testing day have helped us to see that even without understanding the whole game mechanics, IsoChronous is still funny, we enjoyed a lot watching them play it and making up sounds for hammer master and the rest of the mighty warriors. Thank you .

We are proud to present IsoChronous trailers. A lot of work has been done to capture the game mechanics and show gameplay in just 1 minute. Hope you enjoy as much as we have had doing them.