SquadCraft 2

Basic Description

A highly strategic and tactical game. Players will alternate between commanding troops and customising them. Plenty of equipment, strategies, and game settings provide tonnes of replayability.

Inspired by X-COMs designed by Julian Gollop

Game Concepts

Easy to learn and play, hard to master
Can have short games, roughly between 30 mins to 1 hr
Can be played with plenty of friends (11 max)
Very rewarding towards players that make strategic decisions
Very dynamic gameplay that contributes to replayability
Realistic, including a destructible environment
Balanced gameplay
Very enjoyable
Very flexible in many ways, including game setups, competition, and the decisions available
Risk-reward gameplay. Decisions come with advantages and disadvantages

Game Flow and Objective

Objective: Kill all enemy marines

Every players starts with 4 marines in any room. After 1 team remains, players can customise their marines in preparation for the next room/round. Each one can equip up to 2 guns, 1 armor, and 6 items. The game ends based on the majority vote on the win condition from the lobby.

Marine Equipment

Each one has their own unique strengths and weaknesses. The following are some examples:

Sub Machine Gun (SMG)

Very effective at wearing down armor. Only accurate at short ranges.

Plasma Rifle

Powerful and regenerates ammo. It is more expensive to obtain than other items.

Heavy Armor

Allows marines to survive several more hits. It's weight limits what else you could equip on the marine.

Personal Teleporter

Marines can instantly travel to a target location. There are limited uses and cooldowns in between.

Cloaking Device

The marine remains cloaked until they perform an action, that usually involves attacking, and cloak re-enables at the start of each turn. There are ways to detect cloaked units and taking damage also disables cloak.

Replayability

The following are sources of randomness:

Which room the players fight in
Lighting
Where the mineral pickups are spawned
Where players start in each room
Firing weapons at long range
Amount of armor that degrades after being hit by projectiles
The game mode if random is selected

The following are what helps make the map dynamic:

The large variety of marine equipment to experiment with
The different research paths you can choose
Different game modes for a different experience
The interesting decision making in tactical battles
Figuring how to beat or counter other players
Learning how to adjust play style based on the amount of players
Learning to improvise with what is available
The behaviour of enemy players, especially if it changes often
Weighing the risk and rewards of your decisions

Videos

Final Comments

This is not supposed to be an exact replica of the original X-COM games. Just simplified, multiplayer supportive, and my own spin on the gameplay. I've also used many game concepts and mechanics that I feel make the original X-COMs great.

A big thanks to all who helped make this map possible. This includes those directly involved in this project and the mapster community :D

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22 comments
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- Reply
- #23
Trieva Jan 25, 2013 at 22:53 UTC - 0 likes
Definitely, and I wonder who could have made such a load screen ;)

That person deserves a big thanks :)

Current Project: SquadCraft 2
Project Page
Feedback Thread
Latest Video
Published Regions: SEA, NA, EU, KOR
Status: Open Beta
- Reply
- #22
SoulFilcher Jan 25, 2013 at 17:25 UTC - 0 likes
OMG the new load screen is beeeautifuuuul! XDDDD
- Custom icons * Unit icons and wireframes * Models
- Reply
- #21
Trieva Oct 21, 2012 at 10:13 UTC - 0 likes
I'm not sure what you're trying to say but I'll take a guess :P

It's pretty cool that a company made a modern, and possibly improved, version of this legendary game.

Thanks if you like my project :)
- Reply
- #20
michaelknives Oct 19, 2012 at 20:50 UTC - 0 likes
XCOM :D
- Reply
- #19
Trieva Apr 21, 2012 at 05:17 UTC - 0 likes
Good point, although there are other ways to uncloak them:
- With a grenade
- With a gun but targeting something with the cloaked unit in the way
- Waiting until cloak expires
- Reply
- #18
Ranakastrasz Apr 21, 2012 at 04:29 UTC - 0 likes
Ah, well, the thing is that you might want to be able to fire at cloaked units. Hmm

Foolish_Fool : "I'm not going to go out and yell at the clouds for blocking my sun." capnflummox : "why the hell not??" crawlers : "Never underestimate people's ability to blame others." Ranakastrasz: "Headshot!" Random person:" Hey, I was typing!" Ranakastrasz: "That will teach you to type on the front line!"
- Reply
- #17
Trieva Apr 21, 2012 at 00:49 UTC - 0 likes
Small clarification:

I've got a major assignment component due next week. After it's done, it's likely I'll spend enough time mapping for another major update.
- Reply
- #16
Trieva Apr 21, 2012 at 00:03 UTC - 0 likes
@Ranakastrasz: Go

Sorry, but I'm really tied down with uni atm so I decided to work on the rifle (with the little time I had).

All guns are allowed to hit enemies at long range, it's just not a 100% chance (and is the 'infinite range accuracy' from the tooltips). I had to remove ground targeting to get this new mechanic to work. I don't think we need it anyway.

EDIT: This new projectile mechanic should solve that problem where aiming (and hitting) was frustrating. Point blank plasma bolts should work now.

Last edited Apr 21, 2012 by Trieva
- Reply
- #15
Ranakastrasz Apr 20, 2012 at 21:37 UTC - 0 likes
Hmm. Rifle does appear to snap properly. It seems to have infinite accuracy, and also can no longer target the ground.

Also, none of the other effects have charges, still.
- Reply
- #14
Trieva Apr 08, 2012 at 14:23 UTC - 0 likes
We can return to the feedback thread. I've just posted there :)