Star Sentinel Tactics Released

<strong>[ Announcement ]</strong>

There's no announcement on the main site, but <a href="http://www.starsentineltactics.com/flash/index.php" target="_blank"><strong>Star Sentinel Tactics</strong></a> was released today <a href="http://www.impulsedriven.com/sstactics" target="_blank">on Impulse</a> for $29.99.
<blockquote>Star Sentinel Tactics is a turn-based tactics game that puts you in command of a squad of elite United Alliance marines - aka the Star Sentinels - as they battle to stop a race of bloodthirsty reptilians launching a devastating attack on our Galaxy. Along the way you'll encounter giant mechs, rotting zombies, mutants and a host of other foes, all intent on your destruction.

Star Sentinel Tactics takes the classic turn-based tactical combat of classic 2D turn-based strategy games, and brings it back up to date with beautiful 3D graphics, realistic line-of-sight, an engaging story, and an array of new weapons and enemies. This is 100% pure tactical combat, with no base-building, no research trees, no resource management and no strategic planning and absolutely no random encounters.
</blockquote><em>Thanks to Humanity has risen! for pointing this out</em>

 

...but base building, resource management, and strategic planning were like half the fun! It's a pity those damn aliens were so LAZY about attacking your bases, because base defense missions were the BEST.

 

Is this seriously supposed to be a selling point? "We deliberately made a clone of Gollop's worst game instead of the best one" doesn't really sound that appealing. They could've at least feigned ignorance of all these concepts.

 

Incubation was awsum, and it didn't have any sandbox or strategic stuff save for managing equipment between missions. Can't really say about this one, but there's nothing inherently wrong with focus on tactical turn based gameplay.

 

Incubation was good enough.

 

I don't mind keeping it all on one level. I like Firefight and Close Combat 3 much more than Close Combat 4/5.
But then...
"28 hand-crafted missions, requiring a wide range of tactical approaches. Use stealth, provide cover fire, snipe, set up ambushes, hold strategic positions, rescue fallen comrades or just go for an all out brute force attack."
Oh, I see. It means "goodbye replayability", doesn't it. Also, no demo?

 

i know the guy who made it through programming forums, he is a nice guy, he helped me when I was asking those stupid noob questions.

 

Yes, my apologies for that. Would you believe that I didn't even know it had been released until today? No? Neither did I, at first.

Which game would that be? Rebelstar:Tactical Command, Rebelstar, Laser Squad, or Lords of Chaos? If memory serves, all four of them eschewed a strategic layer in favour of making the tactical element deeper.

Regardless, I didn't clone anyone's game. I will admit to being inspired by Laser Squad and Rebelstar, as well as Incubation and Jagged Alliance (both of which also favoured the tactical elements) but I also wanted to add an ongoing storyline, character interaction and set piece battles, none of which were really possible if I kept a strategy layer.

I hope people will keep an open mind to the possibility that all of the additions might make up for the loss of the strategic layer, but we all have our preferences, and I'm sure some people won't be able to get past that omission.

Agreed! Shame that Blue Byte haven't made anything which appealed to me since then.

I prefer to think of it as a different kind of replayability. I have a full toolset which I used to create all the missions in the game. I plan to release the toolset (for free) along with a couple of bonus missions and tutorials, so that players can make their own content for unlimited replayability, without having to rely on random number generators to make interesting levels. The toolset actually allows you to do pretty much everything I did making the game, including import your own models, sounds, music, control everything with scripts, write your own dialogue, etc.

Sadly, no demo yet, and I'd love to explain why that hasn't happened yet, but my lawyer would shoot me. Perhaps the fact that I didn't know the game had even been released until today will give you a clue.

Hi Slenkar. Thank you for the kind words, and glad I was able to help.

 

Sounds fine to me as long as the tactical layer holds up well enough on its own... and if that is the case, then combined with the toolset you've got my purchase. I'll hold out for a demo, though.

 

Is it going to be available in disc form, or places other than Impulse?