Greetings, future tacticians!

We’re driving hard to nail down dozens of heroes and special abilities, polishing their animations and special effects, along with developing all sorts of maps with different types of terrain, and, hey, how does all of those abilities and terrain types play out in PVE versus PVP, anyway? In this hurricane of details, we would be pulled to pieces without having a focus, a set of guideposts we keep in mind every step of the way. Today, we’d like to share with you the first of these guideposts for Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus.

ONE: We want to put THE definitive turn based tactics game in your pocket.

That sounds inspiring, but what exactly does that mean to us? We’ve decided that to be THE turn based tactical game on mobile, we need three things:

First, the gameplay needs to be quick and responsive. A turn-based game does not always make people think “fast paced and exciting.” After all, the virtue of these games is that you can take all the time you need to decide on your next move. We want that, too, but we also want to make it feel fast no matter how much time you spend.

We don’t think that speed should be directly related to time in most of our game modes, because that’s not the right choice for a Snowprint player. (See this article about “every-day gamers” for more details: https://snowprintstudios.com/rich-experiences-for-the-everyday-gamer-part-1/) We don’t want you to lose a fight because you looked up from your phone to see if the train was near your stop. We don’t want you to have to abandon an exciting match because your name was finally called in the waiting room.

What we do here is make a lot of things happen at the same time, instead of serially. One of your units might be killed and his death animation will play, at the same time that another unit moves into position. There’s no lag even if poison envelopes some of your fighters while air support drops in reinforcements. The response to your swipes and taps should be immediate. All together, the feel should be fast and snappy, with you in control.

UI design is very important to this quick, responsive feeling. Our games have a lot of underlying systems and interlocking factors, so our UI needs to let you intuitively access a lot of information without overwhelming you or bogging you down.

Second, fast and responsive gameplay should be accessible to everyone, but reward those who dive deep. Can you play our game without understanding much more than swipe to move, tap to activate? Yes. Basic gameplay should always be clear and immediately rewarding. We don’t want you to have to study the game for years to do cool stuff and have some big “wow” moments, and we definitely don’t want you to feel punished for not belonging to our Discord or following our creators.

Still, we want to reward the people who take the time to unpack all the layers. We want to reward people who understand all the different units and abilities, and the terrain, and work to understand how all those factors interact. We want there to be no end to the discoveries, and keep smart players engaged for years with always something more to learn and refine.

Finally, we think the game’s polish and production values should feel right to a Warhammer 40,000 player. Games Workshop puts a ton of detail into everything they release, and that love of detail is amplified by the Warhammer community. We all put our hearts into painting tiny things, and choosing just the right elements for our visions.

We want this game to reflect all of that, for the in game elements to be worthy of that kind of passion. Of course, at the same time, it’s got to be playable as well as good looking. An amazing but drawn out animation gives you a “wow” moment the first time, but the tenth time, you just want to skip it. And a super detailed model that makes your game lag and drag isn’t worth anything beyond a promotional screenshot. The only screenshots we care about are the ones you’ll take and share, so it’s on us to give you something that feels like it’s worthy of your Warhammer collection while keeping it fast.

Check out part two: https://snowprintstudios.com/our-guideposts-for-warhammer-40000-tacticus-part-2/
And now, part three: https://snowprintstudios.com/our-guideposts-for-warhammer-40000-tacticus-part-3/