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Another Game in the Works – "Clans"

After a period of game-making hibernation, today I found the time to get back into shape. Previously I had teased about a strategy game called MUTANT OVERLORDS. As my design doc hit the 4,500th word for that game, I realized that perhaps it was beyond the scope of my current skills. I’d like to tackle it someday, but it’s prudent to start on something less ambitious.

“Clans” (very much a working title) is a simple asynchronous turn-based strategy game of hidden information. Drawing inspiration from the board game Sekigahara, victory in “Clans” will be achieved by surprising your enemy by your unit composition and choosing the right time to play “tactics” cards that can change the nature of battles:

Armies are composed of stacks of units and used to take key parts of a point-to-point map. On your turn, you’ll queue up movement orders for your armies. When you opponent has done the same, the orders will be resolved simultaneously.

Choosing and ordering the individual units of an army is the key mechanic of “Clans.” While your opponent will see your armies and the number of units in them at all times, they won’t know the composition of your army. Perhaps you’ve filled it with a number of cheap, fast units to give the impression of strength where there is none. Perhaps you have an elite few heavy hitters. Perhaps you have a mix:

Each type of unit will have an ability it grants to its army when it is the topmost “lead” unit in the army. In the above screenshot, a “shield” unit is atop the army which makes it both harder to kill and harder to move.

I have some further ideas on how this mechanic will work to offset the obvious “kitchen sink” army composition strategy that this otherwise lends itself to. I don’t want to say too much more until I have more than a simple mockup though.