Broken Lines - WW2 narrative tactics with simultaneous turn resolution

[Infinitron]

Join Jakob Hansson as he talks you through how he plays Broken Lines and explains the importance of the actions and abilities that he uses.

 

[Infinitron]

O_o

 

[Tom Baker's Arse]

Complete and utter shite.

 

[Infinitron]

The Broken Lines developer diary is back!
In this episode, we take a look at two vital items that you can bring into a level - Grenades and Medpacks.
Be sure to pay close attention as knowing how these two items work will be vital if you aim to win the game while keeping everyone alive and together.

 

[Infinitron]

We were thrilled to work with Peter Snejbjerg, a highly experienced illustrator that comic fans may know due to his time with DC Comics and Dark Horse.

This episode looks at how he works, what hardware he uses, what his experience was working with Broken Lines, and how it differed to working on comics.

You can see more of his work on his portfolio: https://snejbjerg.com/

 

[Infinitron]

Oh, this is releasing today: https://steamcommunity.com/games/926580/announcements/detail/1719749856669784384



$25.

 

[Infinitron]

Out now:


https://af.gog.com/game/broken_lines?as=1649904300

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[fantadomat]

Sooo has anyone tried it,is it decent?

 

[frajaq]

R$ 49,99 holy moly

 

[Strange Fellow]

I bought this, probably gonna give it a go tomorrow. Does seem a little pricey (about 25 USD here), but hey, if it's good...

 

[luj1]

I like the concept, yet I am repelled by the journeyman artist.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I'll say one thing right away: the UI is a bit shit. You have 8 second rounds. You have a handy bar to show you how much time is left, which steadily fills as the round progresses. You have the time it takes for each command to fire off, measured in seconds from the start of the round. Nobody managed to put two and two together?

I think the art looks fine, though.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Bought it and played the tutorial and the very, very beginning of the first mission.

About people complaining about women soldiers : it is Pulp over-the-top WW2 not pretend-historical WW2 so I don't care much. The first mission is your plane getting shot down over a neutral Eastern Europe country ^^, where people speak somethings that sounds like a slavic language, so I am gonna assume this country is Czechzerland, or maybe Swedoslavia.

I will give a more full review in the coming days.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I was coming here ready to vent my raeg at the tardo start-of-misson checkpoint save system, but it turns out it actually saves on exit, similarly to Souls games. Don't mind me, people. Then again it would've been nice if we could know how saving works without having to experiment.

 

[Infinitron]

The latest developer diary video answers one of the most important questions - what are things like behind the scenes at the PortaPlay offices?

 

[RolePlayer]

Any chance this game would play decently on an intel hd 4000 in 720p (8+ year old laptop with integrated graphics?)

 

[Strange Fellow]

Any chance this game would play decently on an intel hd 4000 in 720p (8+ year old laptop with integrated graphics?)

I don't think so. It's running my RX 470 on jet engine mode, and I'm getting the occasional FPS drop. An 8 year old laptop sounds like a lost cause even on minimum settings.

 

[RolePlayer]

Any chance this game would play decently on an intel hd 4000 in 720p (8+ year old laptop with integrated graphics?)

I don't think so. It's running my RX 470 on jet engine mode, and I'm getting the occasional FPS drop. An 8 year old laptop sounds like a lost cause even on minimum settings.

I pirated it...only way it runs with playable framerates is with everything off/set to low and at 800x600. Probably getting 25-30 fps but only played the tutorial.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Update: this game is p. cool. The phase-based combat is pretty damn fun - very chaotic, and as the rounds are quite long it's difficult to make properly coordinated moves and keep track of everything at times, not least because your soldiers have a tendency to panic and flee at the mere sound of gunfire, but damn, those rare moments when a plan comes together flawlessly...

I'm also liking the resource management. It's well balanced, as well it ought to be since the game is very linear, but you never know with weird developers. The death mechanic in particular is cool: each soldier can survive being downed once, after which they receive the "wounded" status. If a wounded soldier goes down, he's down for good. The wounds persist across missions, so as you play you'll accumulate more and more wounds in your squad (depending on what difficulty you're playing on, wounds may heal in time - on hard they don't, at least thus far).

This combines with the squad progression system to create some interesting choices. The fundamental capabilities of individual soldiers don't change, but you'll assign each soldier traits from a shared pool. After a trait is assigned to a soldier, it's gone from the pool and can't be reassigned, unlike weapons and utilities. So you'll start out kitting out your favourite soldiers with all the coolest traits, but the trouble is they'll eventually get wounded. Then the question becomes: do you send your wounded star man out to fight, risking a permanent casualty, or do you sub in the unused loser whom no one likes, knowing he can take one for the team if necessary? It's a cool dilemma, and it makes sure you rotate between missions.
Unfortunately it also heavily disincentivises the use of shotguns, which I've found to be pretty crap so far compared to rifles and especially SMGs. By the way, if you've played JA2 1.13 and been annoyed at how no other TB squad tictacs game has managed to do suppressive fire properly, or even tried at all - you'll love this.

I'll reserve judgement on the whole package for now, but the extent to which this game seems to have flown under the radar here is silly.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Your chance to tell us what YOU want!
Hello everyone,

Now that Broken Lines has been available to you for a while giving you all a good chance to play the game, we’re beginning to look to the future!

As you may have noticed, we (the Broken Lines team) have been as active as possible on the discussion board, listening to your thoughts on the game and helping you out where possible - after all we just want you to have a good experience playing Broken Lines!

As we’re now looking to the future, we decided that it would be best to give you - the community - a chance to make your thoughts heard on what we do with the game.

So, we’d like to invite you all to take part in our community poll[docs.google.com].

Explanation/How this Works:
This poll is split into 7 sections. In the first section, you are asked to rank what aspect of the game you feel we should focus on the most.

The subsequent sections of the poll then takes you through multiple ideas for each aspect (listed in section one) that we’ve heard from the community and asks you to rank them in terms of what you would like to see.

If you have an idea that isn’t listed, don’t worry - at the end of each section, you have the chance to write your own idea for the topic.

At the end of the poll, you have a further free section where you may write any ideas that you feel does not fit into the previous sections.

Finally, you will need to sign in to google to take part - however, no email addresses/personal details are stored by us.

Important
This poll is to give us a direction and provide us with structured feedback on what the community would like to see us add to the game.

At this point, we cannot promise that the most popular idea(s) will be worked on, as we first need to judge the feasibility of the ideas.

 

[Infinitron]

Codex review by Strange Fellow: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-review-broken-lines.132265/

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Broken Lines on macOS and Linux
Broken Lines has dedicated versions for PC Windows, Linux, and macOS​

Attention Broken Lines community,

It has been brought to our attention that there is quite a lot of interest in Broken Lines coming from macOS and Linux gamers; we regularly get asked if we 'plan' to support these Operating Systems.

The answer may surprise you - we already do.
Though it may have flown under the radar a bit!

If you happen to be a Tux fan, or simply prefer the feel of macOS, we've got you covered with native ports of the game.

In all, we support the following Operating Systems:

• Windows (Windows 7 or higher)
  
• Linux (any 64bit distro)
  
• macOS (OSX version 10.13.6 +)

So, there you have it. We hope that you'll enjoy playing Broken Lines - no matter what OS you are on!

- Your Broken Lines Team

 

[Heroic Liberator]

20% discount:

 

[mck]

why is this game so orange?