A full day of Radioactive updates and testing. The morning involved testing and small changes, particularly to the demo. The afternoon was about creating the artwork, setting up the store, more testing of the final configurations. Most of the artwork for the game consists of a simple dark background, with white text. This simple look is the second incarnation of artwork for the game.
For the second pack, I used 'Commodore 64 themed' colours, and pixelated artwork.
The game is now as good as it's ever been. I listed many possible ways to improve the game; changing menus, adding more units, but none would decisively improve it. It's important not to add so many new things that it becomes over-complicated without being better. Ideally complexity wouldn't be apparent, extras should feel natural.
I could, for example, add 3D deforming territory, or units that move. This wouldn't be at all 'realistic' for the scenario, as we're playing on a global scale. It may look interesting, but in gameplay terms we wouldn't want units to cluster into craters, or have land units pushed into the sea or vice versa. Units that move wouldn't really improve the game technically but would make it more complicated to play.
One option which may improve the game mechanics is the ability to place units, adding to the strategy. The downside to this is the time this would take. The game, even now, seems to take a long time to set up, and each unit appears in under one second... it would be hugely slow to wait for other players to place their pieces. It may help with fairness, removing a random element in the gameplay, as the placement of the units can affect the game. I thought of an inversion system, where two games are played, with a second game mirroring the first, for fairness. The aiming system may allow players to learn angles and ranges from the first game. Again, more complexity but not certainly a better game.
Perhaps all good games have an element of chance. Even games of pure chance (like Snakes and Ladders) can be fun. The key thing is that it's fair to all players equally, and that is the case here.
