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[Riv_]

Hi,

I'm a game designer and 3d Artist , part of a two-man dev team working on a dynamic , tactical card game focused on representing plausible if-not-realistic ship-to-ship combat in space. (as realistic as a card game about spaceships can be)



What started out as a small project to pass the time turned into something that's become pretty special (well... to us anyway) and that we want to start working on full-time soon, cause we're pretty excited about the way it's shaping up


Design wise, the game combines modular systems-based ship customization, with deep tactical card game mechanics... basically we want to make FTL meets Slay the Spire, two very elegantly designed games, that as a designer I can only stare at in awe, and hope we can make something at least 20% as good.

Visually we try to approach the game in a semi-realistic fashion, The Expanse series has been a big inspiration there


Our core design pillars:

Tactical decision making. Command a battleship engaged in combat with varied enemy vessels. Raise shields, fire Lasers, unleash Missile salvos, hack enemy systems, build a drone fleet, create weaponized micro black holes, or immobilize and board enemy ships

Modular design. Mix and match pieces of Equipment and Subsystems to uncover varied synergies and interactions between them. Your loadout determines your deck of cards, and how you interact with it

Believable space combat. Use scientifically sound concepts and plausible futurism to inspire game mechanics and systems interaction

Cinematic and exciting battles. Snappy animations and nifty visual effects that convey the action but don't get in the way of a smooth experience

Create an interesting setting. We love stories in games, and good stories require an interesting setting, so good world-building is a priority

So this is the game in a nutshell, if you find it somewhat interesting, let's have a discussion about it, if you're feeling really daring, you can even join our discord at https://discord.gg/DB2qNxhvJb

We also started doing devlogs, check out the first one at https://www.projectwarlike.com/

[Alain]

Hi Riv, thanks for sharing your project. The concept and art direction look great to me so far. Keep us posted on the progress!

[Riv_]

Thanks for the encouragement Alain, really means a lot , i'll do my best to post regular updates 

[Riv_]

Hey there, we posted a new devlog on our website at https://www.projectwarlike.com/post/devlog-1-ships-and-equipment

This time we go into how your ship loadout will work, and how your loadout generates your deck of cards (instead of building a deck directly, you equip your ship with various weapons and utility equipment)



so please check out our devlog, and if you have any questions and feedback, they are always welcome
(also let me know if I should post the devlogs in this thread directly instead of linking to our website)

[Alain]

Nice, the UI and interaction looks snappy and polished already. I also like the test weapon designs.

[Riv_]

Thanks for you kind words once again Alain, it really means a lot

We've posted another devlog on our website, at https://www.projectwarlike.com/post/devlog-2-updates-and-subsystems

It talks about our version of Slay the spire's artifacts, namely equipment subsystems, which boost the effects of your cards, or trigger specific actions when the conditions are met.
We also started working on the environment where you will be customizing your ship, and that will act as your home base as well, the Hangar. (Made a test animation in 3DS Max directly to see how it would work in motion)


Things are advancing, slower than expected (obviously), but at least the journey has been pretty smooth so far.

Thanks for reading

[Alain]

Nice, this home base animation looks great, can't wait to see it ingame!

[Riv_]

Thanks Alain, i plan to look into some IK solutions in Unity to see if we can't set those arms up to work directly without any hard coded animations, that'd be really great, to have them automatically add/remove equipment on your ship one you lock in a specific loadout before heading out on a mission

[harleyw]

This looks like exactly 100% the kind of thing I want to play 

[Riv_]

Ah, we'll you're in luck then harleyw, we just launched a very early alpha test build of the combat part of the game, to get feedback on what we have so far.

If any of you want to check out the build, you can download it at:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ty4dove26f5199i/WarlikeAlpha01.1.zip?dl=0

We have only focused on the combat part so far, the meta-game aspect in between the combat sections is very very rough, a lot of it using placeholder art.

Windows defender might pick it up as a suspect executable or something, which is annoying, but you can choose the "run anyway" option

If you enjoy the alpha and want to discuss it, feel free to either do it here or on our Discord server (link is in the game)


Cheers

edit: i just realized there's a separate subforum for test builds, my bad

[shadowsoflight777]

Looks really neat! I love tactical space battles and I love card-based games. So far it looks very visually appealing, too. I'll have to see if I can sneak some time for an Alpha look...

[Riv_]

After a long period of silence (and redesigns, and a demo, and new people joining the project, and scope creep, and so on) , we finally figured out what our game wants to be, and we're taking it in that direction.

This devlog focuses on narrative event nodes, a big way we will expand upon the world and inject some character and worldbuilding into our game. It's always good to start somewhere, and we started off by just ripping off FTL's concept, but it's already starting to grow into a thing of its own.
You can see an event in action and see how they work at the link below

https://www.projectwarlike.com/post/devlog-4-one-year-later

Cheers 

[oldblood]

This project is looking super promising. Played a ton of FTL back in the day but looks like this is definitely putting its own spin on it. Nice work.

[noomnau]

 
Great render, good rockets launch, smooth robotic animation. Game looks nice!

[Riv_]

Thanks for the words of encouragement , really means a lot 

We have a new devlog out, going a bit into the FTL-like meta-game, and presenting one of the larger enemies you will face in the next demo we'll put out (sometime in the next month i hope)

https://www.projectwarlike.com/post/devlog-5-meta-game

[turnipinrut]

This looks fantastic!
You should get a steam page up for it right away so people can add it to their wishlists!

[Alain]

Still a big fan of the visuals and ship architecture

[Riv_]

Cheers Alain and turnipinrut!!

Also, not a devlog per se, but something we've been playing around with on the shader side, trying out a more stylized look



Looks pretty cool in motion as well, you can see it here: https://twitter.com/WarlikeCCG/status/1497200873923039243


Still playing around with the shader , so it's not final in any sense, but if you have any thoughts on this direction, it'd be much appreciated to hear if you think this is worth pursuing further

 

[logophil]

Wow, just seen this project, looks super exciting! I do like the new stylised look, though the old style was good too, I'd need to see more examples I think to be sure which I prefer.

[Alain]

I like the stylized shader as well. But as logophil says, there was nothing wrong with the old one either. If the stylized look saves you time in your 3d pipeline, it is definitely worth thinking about in my eyes.