Hello World!

I'm working on a new project 🎉. I call it Grid Battles and it's an online tactical wargame for two players in a quasi-medieval setting, with boardgame elements like dice thorwing. The game is still under development, but you can try it if you want. On this blog I'm planning to write about my plans, progress in the development and all the new things introduced to the game.

Okay, but what is the game about? 🤔

What is a tactical wargame you ask? Well, as the word wargame suggests it will be a game about conflicts, wars or battles. And the tactical means the focus will be put on the individual battles, not on whole wars or campaigns. So you will be commanding your troops on a relatively small battlefield, trying to outthink and outmanouver your opponent in a single battle.

From a player perspective, you will choose one of the many possible maps (scenarios), invite your friend and then your armies will clash together on the battlefield. You both will be trying to fullfill your victory conditions before the other can fullfil theirs.

For now, there is no story. Every scenario is planned to be an independent battle. But who knows, maybe during development I will decide to link some of the scenarios into a bigger campaign. Right now, everythink is possible, but my primary objective is to have the independent battles working.

What does it look like? 👀

The game is under development and I am using only minimal graphics as you can clearly see from the screenshot below 😅.

What about the rules? 📖

Battles take place on a hex board. Every hex has a terrain that can affect movement and fighting abilities of a unit occupying it. Units have only a few statistics like movement points, health, attack, defense and bonuses against other units. I am trying to keep it simple, so the game should be very easy to learn. The attacks are resolved by throwing some dice - for the attacker, for the defender - and applying possible bonuses for unit types and terrain. I will talk more about the rules in some of the later posts.

Technology ⚙

Grid Battles is a browser game, so everything you will need to play it is any of the modern browsers. From the developer perspective, the frontend is written in JavaScript, using React and Redux. On the backend I decided to go with the technologies I am most familiar with, so PHP with Symfony framework and a relational database (MariaDB) it is. I have considered using JavaScript on the backend as well but I went with server-side technologies I feel more confident and better aware about the security risks. At least for now.

Is it possible to try the game?

Yes, it is. You can find the latest released version of the game on the URL address https://www.gridbattles.com. You are welcome to try and test it. I'm doing my best to release only bug-free versions, but be aware it is still under development, so the rules might change and you may even loose some data.

I hope I will be able to deliver a good enough version of the game in some reasonable time. Wish me luck.