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Tactical Breach Wizards Profile
Tactical Breach Wizards

@BreachWizards

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A character-driven tactics puzzle game about wizards in kevlar, being made by @Pentadact , @John_Arr and @jwindr . Previous games: @GunpointGame and @HeatSig .

PC - wishlist it on Steam!
Joined March 2019
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Pinned Tweet
@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
Here's our new trailer, by @Derek_Lieu ! Featuring a new region, a new wizard, our conspiracy map, our outfits menu, and the first taste of our music, which is by Robert Arzola: Wishlist if it tickles you:
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 month
The Tactical Breach Wizards demo is out now! 🚀 From the @Gunpoint and @HeatSig devs 🧙‍♀️Try the Navy Seer and Freelance Storm Witch 🚦 Defenestrate a Traffic Warlock 🪄 Plus! A little something extra just for the demo... RTs much appreciated!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
Huh, there's actually nothing stopping the Druid picking up intel while he's in dog form. How does that even anim- OH NO
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 month
So! We're releasing our first playable demo next week, June 3rd! Then on June 12th, we've somehow got @Hbomberguy streaming the full game?! Read the rollercoaster ride of how that happened:
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
I made doors block pathfinding, but didn't tell the Charge ability's targeting logic - I was curious if that would let me still bash through them like before. Well played, AI.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
25 days
A wizard breaches precisely when they mean to. 📣 TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS launches August 22nd! 🎬 Watch the new trailer! It was very fun to make. 🎮 Demo! Wishlist! Retweet? 🙏
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Announcing a bold new direction for Tactical Breach Wizards: *re*fenestration.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
Alright, who wants to play Tactical Breach Wizards? We have a short, spoiler-free test build! We're rolling out several batches of Steam keys, giving a different audience first dibs each time - details: Wishlist it here!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Here's a story about why, instead of making a game, you should just not. Recently we added 'Confidence Goals' to Tactical Breach Wizards: they're optional objectives that are sometimes much harder than your main goals...
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
Traffic Warlock's 'Crush Hour' ability, outstanding issues: 1. Phantom traffic model could use some work. 2. Also kills the Traffic Warlock.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
We have a new beta ready! It's the first act of the game, and our first showing of actual story and dialogue! Signing up is just one button this time, here's how: And here's a new 7-minute explainer trailer: RTs appreciated!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
He died as he lived: oscillating wildly between two diagonally adjacent positions. (GIF by @jwindr )
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
I am so delighted with how our new character upgrade screen is shaping up, I keep starting the game just to play with it. Art and the workbench concept by @John_Arr - so many wonderful little details on each one. Implementation by @jwindr - this came together fast!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
"Sure it's a breach-and-clear game, but we really want our dialogue to speak to larger issues and build meaningful relationship between our characters." "Cool, can you give an example?" *glances at editor* "Not... right now."
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Lately I've (Tom've) been prototyping a turret, and it's a good case study in how hard things are easy and easy things are hard. A turret's just an enemy that doesn't move, surely. Well, setting its move range to 0 was easy enough, but then on the turret's turn...
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
6 months
PCG coming at us hard for 'Navy Seer', in an affectionate way that I am nevertheless choosing to take personally.
@pcgamer
PC Gamer
6 months
We love bad puns. And wizards. And defenestration. If you do too, then check out Tactical Breach Wizards 🪄
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
Haven't done a #screenshotsaturday for a while - maybe ever, for @BreachWizards ?! You've just arrived in Kalan, and face a number of Riot Priests that suggests you should not have gone to Kalan.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
Bosses have literally one more thought in their brain than henchmen.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
17 days
We were one of the most played demos in Next Fest! 🧙‍♂️ 48k players! 📈 108k wishlists!! 📊 72% of folks who finished rated it 9 or 10/10 Still up: Thanks so much, everyone! Here's what that means to us in 6 years of context lol
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
"Ugh, players don't read tutorials." "Ugh, players REALLY don't read tutorials." "Ugh, player's don't read tutorials then specifically complain the info isn't mentioned anywhere!" "Ugh... it turns out I didn't actually put this tutorial in."
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
A fun thing about working with @John_Arr is when you see his concept art and think "Wow, I hope it can look that good!" and the next thing you know it's done and real and in-game and better.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 months
Just sent out the first 500 keys for the increasingly inaccurately named February Beta of @BreachWizards ! If you're not on our mailing list or haven't opted in yet, there's still time - we'll be doing more batches: Wishlist:
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
This picture of Jen has been in the game for years, and only today did I zoom in close enough to notice the photo on her PI badge. Goddammit @John_Arr
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
My God, I've playtested this level so many ways, and until a tester report I read just now, I never realised you could do this. Neither does our tutorial, so now I have to teach it to be more open minded.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
Where would we be without this project's true creative powerhouse: drunk Tom.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
Alright, last chance to get in on the Tactical Breach Wizards beta! We just opened up the opt-in, instructions on how to do it here:
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
🎵 Game Development! 🎵
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Anyway it's super cool that our game can have stealth bugs that don't show up til it hits the outside world, and that these fail silently, and that I can't tell from feedback reports between a UI element not being prominent enough and a UI element being *completely invisible*.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
Tactical Breach Wizards has changed a lot since we last showed it, so here's a new video! Navy Seer and Witch Cop fight their way out of Rushwater Police Station, but the local Traffic Warlock stands in their way. Wishlist?
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Strongly recommend asking this question every time you do a beta, because this is the most satisfying thing in the world.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
Design and implement 12 new ability upgrades, 8 of them unique new functionality: 1 day Make the ability button slightly prettier: 4+ days, ongoing
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
Hadn't seen our data privacy screen in a while, found it down the back of a crate.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
We're going to let one last batch of folks into this beta before it ends, so opt-in now if you fancy it: If you're already on our mailing list, enter your e-mail anyway and you should get a link to update your profile.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Thinking back to the 2017 Game Maker prototype of @BreachWizards , which was going fine thanks why
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
The mind of the game designer lives where others dare not dream.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
Thinking up obstacle types.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
24 days
Next Fest is live, and look!! An elderly gent has somehow bumbled his way to the top spot??! Thanks so much for the huge response to the trailer & demo so far. For anyone who missed: Release date trailer! Demo!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
ok
@pcgamer
PC Gamer
3 years
Put an 'undo' button in every strategy game.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
My greatest achievement in yesterday's playtest was killing the same person twice with a single move, if you want an idea of how weird the finale is getting.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
We've been brainstorming abilities for the next class, and testing the new version tonight was amazing fun. We're reaching a critical mass of ways for wizards to set each other up for clutch plays that can combine into turns where you just wanna clap at what you made happen.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
Thought it would be good to pulse the mana you just earned so you can tell what's new vs what you already had. This definitely warranted the 19 iterations I did on the independent animation curves driving the pulse and the colour fade.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
Spent a couple of days this week seeing if I could make an event log that wasn't too ugly to read. Made it smooth and coloured and let you drag to scroll it, and thanks to @jwindr it even erases events when you rewind. #screenshotsaturday
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
Making a boss fight for a puzzly tactics game is an interesting challenge. I think we've managed to hit these goals: - Not a bullet sponge - No obvious strat works, but! - No attacks are simply ignored - And many, many non-obvious strats work - Breaks your brain a bit
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
25 days
OK we've just been informed that PCGS will be showing an outdated version of the trailer with the wrong date, so I need you all to mentally replace 20th with 22nd when you see it. This release date announce is going well unless announcing the right release date was important.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
Game dev is full of fascinating questions, such as: why did I create an AI template called 'Furthest from hostile' and then make its only priority to get as close as possible to hostiles?
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
Classic Overwatch Guy.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
Month 1: 'Action' abilities use up other actions Month 3: Support for abilities that can only be used once per turn Month 9: Unified action point system Month 18: Discover nothing in our code actually prevents you selecting and using an ability in any of these circumstances
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 months
A little update about what's going on with beta testing: It's more complicated - and less interesting - than you might think!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
25 days
PC Gaming Show starts in about 20 mins: We have a new trailer in it, to reveal... a release date?! *gasps* *murmuring* *one guy claps but it doesn't catch on* Our bit should be about 2 hours from now.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
29 days
We've got a new patch ready to try, if you wouldn't mind moseying over to the nextversion branch to check we didn't break anything? Here's what's new, and how to do that: .
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Which *somewhat explains* why people were not super-noticing them! And means I have just *completely broken* the game by making it mandatory to prove you noticed them!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
Tinkering with a new level element at the end of a long day. "Ooh, what if it was like a two headed turret, and each gun can target, take damage, and be hacked individually?" ... We already have the power to put two turrets next to each other, Tom.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Turns out a certain shader used in their transparent background was not being included in the build because Unity didn't think we needed it. That causes the game to just silently fail when trying to draw them, so they don't show up at all. Wooo!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
Animation curves let you precisely and elegantly tweak the character and feel of a transition, which is to say they let you waste your entire life.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
A theme of Zan's story is his struggle to make difficult decisions, but I think this new AI has him beat.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
For completely different reasons, my last two writing jobs have involved writing endless, savage dunks from one character to another. Just kicking the shit out of my imaginary friends every day. Weird work if you can get it.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Delighted to have Steve aboard for level design! You'll know his work from the amazing Dust District in Dishonored 2, or BioShock Infinite, John Wick Hex, Alba...
@essell2
Steve Lee
3 years
Happy to be heading back to the tactics genre, helping @Pentadact make levels for @breachwizards :) The level editor I'm using to make stuff will also ship with the game for players to use, which is nice. Here's Tom's trailer / explanation of the game:
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
... We've never had an *enemy* also be *cover*, and turrets can also be pushed around - we've never had moving cover before. How to approach?! Just add a cover object to it. Turns out that just works. Thanks for reading!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
We have a new beta brewing! Get on our mailing list and you can opt-in when you sign up: If you're already on it, enter your e-mail anyway and you should get a link to update your profile - you can opt in from there. We plan to invite 1k folks on Monday.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
Terrifying when players actually read and remember the garbage figures you threw around. (They're absolutely right)
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
What @BreachWizards error messages lack in specificity, they make up for in spirit.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
(I should probably clarify that the Traffic Warlock is an enemy boss we're trying out, not a member of your team)
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
Made a title card format where the text is bigger the fewer words I use, and it might be the hardest I've ever chased brevity in my career.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
24 days
Our wishlist graph looks insane, we doubled our previous biggest spike ever, for any of our games. Please do not notice how far back the dates go.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
18 days
You've only got a day-ish left to play our demo in the Next Fest! You can still play it after that, but it won't be 'in the Next Fest', and then what will you tell your grandkids.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
Fixed it, and with only a minor cost to gameplay.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
*Gives the Seer an ability that shoots twice* Hm, this is good, but what if... *14 hours of deep thought* ...he shot 3 times?!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
Researching witchy things, and Google aggressively autocompleted the start of the word 'ritual' to 'ritual hockey'. Sometimes you're just like, alright, sure, show me that.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
7 months
Testing a tweak to Broom Breach: Huh, I thought you're meant to target the indoor side of the window, but I guess it's been a while since I used it. ... OK no, you probably should click indoors.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
OK the 'front towards enemy' detail is now canon
@John_Arr
John Roberts
4 years
I've wanted to try prop making for a while, but don't really have the space/tools for it. 'Paint a stick and bolt some crap to it' seemed doable though.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
It's satisfying graph time again! Latest beta moved the needle significantly in a very positive direction, 9s and 10s now make up 41% of responses! No predictor of actual review scores obv, but Heat Sig's last beta only had 32% a month before launch.
@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Strongly recommend asking this question every time you do a beta, because this is the most satisfying thing in the world.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 month
Dog rules implemented.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
The PC Gaming Show starts in 2 hours, where we're showing off a new @BreachWizards trailer made by the great @Derek_Lieu ! It's the first time we've ever had a trailer made professionally, excited to see how it goes down. 12.30pm Pacific Time
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
First batch of keys are taken! Folks should receive them in the next few hours. When the next batch is available, people Following the game on Steam will be the first to be told - do that here: This beta includes our super quick-to-use level editor!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
Today in flimsy claims.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
The idea is the missions are easy to complete but there's lots of extra depth in trying to pull off these ambitious feats. We sent a test build privately to a few people recently, I was keen to know if they worked - did people notice them, did they try for them, were they fun?
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Played the game on Steam again. Confidence goals still missing in that level. Huh? Confidence goals missing in EVERY level! @jwindr looked into it, and found it only happens in builds of the game - not when playing it within Unity.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
Just had one of those moments where the way a solution plays out makes you both laugh and clap. It's so rewarding to see how sprinkling a few complications onto the @BreachWizards formula creates problems that take what feel like galaxy brain solutions.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
Tore through a ton of rapid prototyping these last few weeks, then spent my last three working days trying to teach one person how to duck.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
To me it was intuitive to mouse over something for more info, but I wasn't surprised to learn that's not universal. So, for now, I figured I'd just give you a primary objective to check your confidence goals, and tell you how to do so. It's completed once you've moused over them
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
It's actually a really useful character-defining exercise to ask: what could you say to this person that, however they might brush it off, would dent a little piece of their soul forever. It should be pretty easy to answer, and different for every character.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
1 year
The villain of @BreachWizards has absolutely terrible politics, and I keep thinking of super valid points your team can make to her. Then I think of what she'd say back, in her most savage, sharpest moments, and I'm like "Ah fuck, that does kind of destroy you."
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
That's not common yet, but now it's a lot clearer how to make it more so. @HeatSig had a similar arc where we get to "OK cool things *can* happen" then work towards "...and they probably will".
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Most people didn't notice them, or didn't notice them until the level end screen told them they'd failed at them. I'd mentioned them in the objectives list, but wanted people to mouse over them to get the details, otherwise it gets cluttery.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
... I just hear footsteps forever, and the game never moves on. The turret's phantom legs have ended linear time. Turns out we had a bug that our turn logic would have hit any time someone wants to move but can't, that's fixed now. But then there's turning...
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Just a reminder that @BreachWizards is by @Pentadact , @John_Arr and @jwindr ! If it was left to Tom, it would still look like this and crash on launch: (Tweets by Tom)
@Pentadact
Tom Francis
7 years
The Tiny Ex-Con is now more rowdy.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
7 months
New @BreachWizards dev log: As we hover around content complete (release still a long way off), I've been finally seeing how to fix some years-long annoyances.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
5 years
I learned on @HeatSig that having something like this in early, even though it's a luxury, pays for itself so many times over by helping you understand bugs when they happen.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
If you're playing the beta and haven't filled in the final feedback form, we'd love to get it in the next 48 hours! That's when we're going to go through the responses. We've had a much better response rate than usual so far, so thanks for that!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Around this time, I was playing the beta on Steam to get some analytics data, and I noticed the confidence goals were entirely missing from one level in the current build.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
2 years
Haven't done a dev log in quite a while, so here's a rambly one about why our resurrection ability was underpowered, and how we fixed it: .
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Whoops, better deploy this update quick! After double-checking they were definitely in working in my current version, of course.
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Our small first batch of testing seems to have gone well so far, so we'll be letting a larger group in today if nothing blows up! Get signed up if you haven't already:
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
... And yet this was easy: there's an 'allegiance' variable we can just flip, a few tweaks to how people generate their lists of valid targets, and one fix for how they decide if their current target is valid, and it works. ...
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
Forgot to say, yes you can stream/video/screenshot/talk about this beta once you're in, and monetize videos of it. We'll be letting another batch of testers in once we've had a chance to go through feedback and make changes. FAQ updated:
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
We're about to let another 1,000 testers in, so click the button if you're interested and didn't yet!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
4 years
It's neat to be able to change setting with a couple of clicks. Props to @jwindr 's Art Finisher algorithm for doing the heavy lifting here - and @John_Arr 's art!
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
... I'm gonna procrastinate on that one because I hate to make widely-used code more complicated unless I absolutely have to. For now, a hacked turret is 'dealt with' and we'll see if we hit actual issues. Now to tackle the hard part: turrets should also be cover! ...
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@BreachWizards
Tactical Breach Wizards
3 years
For those in the beta, we'll probably shut it down in 24 hours - so please use the feedback form link in the in-game menu if you haven't already! Thank youuuu
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