>Highest taxes and contributions in the world
That would be an interesting twist since Spellbound's cancelled sequel to Robin Hood was precisely called Vampire Hunter.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/vampire-hunter-commandos-like-game.80310/
Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3 devs want to leave the real-time tactics genre behind
It’s “Stealth Strategy” now, Mimimi Games tell RPS, and here’s what that means for their new game, Codename Süßkartoffel
Feature by Katharine Castle Editor-in-chief
Published on Dec. 8, 2022
The makers of Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun and Desperados 3 have been thinking a lot about real-time tactics recently. Not just because they’re knee-deep in making their next tactics game at the moment, currently known as Codename Süßkartoffel (the word for "Sweet Potato" in their native German), but because they feel the genre as a whole doesn’t quite convey what’s so special about their catalogue of excellent stealth ‘em ups anymore. It’s a fair cop – despite appearing in our best strategy games list for many years, even I’ve struggled to come up with a succinct way of describing them. Thus, it’s time for a change, say the studio.
In a blog post published today on Mimimi Games’ website, the studio announced they’re going to be referring to their work as “Stealth Strategy” games going forward, and they’re hoping this new genre label will help prospective players better understand their special blend of silent assassination tactics. This kind of shift isn’t without its challenges, though, so I caught up with the team at Mimimi to talk more about this newfound shift, and how it’s going to lay the foundations for what’s to come in Codename Süßkartoffel.
Of course, by leaving the real-time tactics label behind, Mimimi aren’t saying the genre as a whole is now redundant. "Real-time tactics" still means a great deal to the development team, and for head of design Moritz Wagner, it conjures “flashbacks to my childhood, […] instantly [making] me think of playing Commandos and how hard it was.” He also told me he’s “still in awe of how incredibly solid and well done the fundamentals of these games laid out by Commandos are,” and that it’s been “incredibly rewarding to work on that, iterate on it, enhance it and try to make more people enjoy it.”
For Codename Süßkartoffel, Moritz says they’ve “taken this genre to the next level in basically every way, which makes it all the more fitting that we are now relabelling the genre to Stealth Strategy.” He’s still tight-lipped about what that evolution will look like, but teases that “there [are] going to be so many ways to play [it], it’s such a cool sandbox that pushes this genre so far ahead and I just want to see what people do with it.”
In some ways, you could say Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3 already offered the kind of sandbox approach to stealth Moritz mentions, as the open-ended nature of their tightly designed environments continue to offer plenty of ways of taking down their respective enemies. But for Moritz and his team, they say that many players still only think there’s “one solution” for each encounter – and it’s something they’re trying to rectify with Süßkartoffel by making it much more beginner-friendly this time.
Desperados 3 has a varied cast of characters, but each mission dictates which ones you'll get to play with.
“It’s the beauty of this genre, that when you are equipped with the skills of our characters and a thought-out plan, you can make almost anything work if you time it right or make the right adjustments. Still, the fact that punishment was sometimes instant and harsh caused the games to come off as sort of ‘narrow’ for some people when it comes to possible solutions.
“With Codename Süßkartoffel being so much more sandboxy in many regards, I think this feeling hopefully will come up less. You just don’t feel as constrained as in our older games, because you can freely select any character you want before each mission, and combine them with each other to fit your playtstyle or the solution you have in mind.”
From left to right: Matthias Kraut, Elena Schulz and Moritz Wagner from Mimimi Games.
With such a big emphasis on sandbox stealth this time, it almost sounds like Süßkartoffel is aiming to become the next Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and when I put the question to Moritz about whether that would be an accurate assessment of what their next game’s going to be like, he says “yes and no”.
“I think on a high level what Metal Gear Solid V did was that it took the Metal-Gear-like stealth formula and embedded it into a much more open structure. On a lower level, that meant changing level situations, skills and weapons in a way that made that work. On that high level, we are doing a similar thing for our formula. We take what made our games great and fun and build a new, more open and sandboxy structure around it. But what that means on the lower level might be different for our games. An example here would be the aforementioned free character-selection for any mission. For the other things we changed here, we are not ready to spoil that surprise yet.”
Aiko's Choice is a standalone expansion to the excellent Shadow Tactics: Blades Of The Shogun.
Until that awaited spoiler moment, Mimimi says that laying down the framework of their new Stealth Strategy label is an important first step. “Our goal is to solve all these misconceptions that some might have had about our games in the past and to explain to new potential players, who haven’t heard of us before, what kind of game we’re actually developing, and most importantly, why it’s fun. And we think you need to find a way to do that as swiftly as possible,” says communications lead Matthias Kraut. “We’re confident that, alongside other factors, this will help to convince more people beyond our core fans to give the game a real chance.”
Part of this problem stems from there not being many games to compare them to, says communications manager Elena Schulz. “Of course, you can always use Commandos as a reference and label them as a modern version of it with a different setting, but if you (or your audience) aren’t aware of Commandos, it’s much harder to describe the games accurately,” she says.
“If you use stealth game or strategy game instead, you will not be able to communicate an important part of the experience. Both are used for very different games from Shadow Tactics or Desperados 3, and can lead to confusion or false expectations. Essentially, even though there are similarities, you probably shouldn’t expect Assassin’s Creed when you start Shadow Tactics.”
The open-ended levels of Desperados 3 offered plenty of tactical mayhem to occur.
Kraut adds that even the team “struggled with this ourselves from time to time,” citing a couple of times they weren’t able to answer even the “simple question of ‘What kind of game is it?’ in previous media interviews. That’s why they’ve been using the Stealth Strategy label to describe Süßkartoffel “internally and externally since last year”.
Platform categories on storefronts often don’t help either, says Schulz. “Our hope for the future is that Stealth Strategy becomes something people associate with our games and similar games, in order to make it easier to describe and recommend them to others. Of course, it would be nice to have a store category for that as well – maybe one day it will go a similar path like Soulslike or Roguelike and people will know immediately what kind of game is referred to when hearing Stealth Strategy.”
I ask the team whether they ever considered making their own “like” label, but Kraut says a genre name such as Soulslike “is something that can only happen organically.” Indeed, for a while “people compared our games to Commandos a lot […] but something like Commandos-like didn’t stick,” he says. “If we tried coining a genre in that style for Codename Süßkartoffel, I believe we would just come off as super pretentious, haha. If the fans and players around the world decide to call our genre “Süßkartoffel-like” in the future, so be it. For now, we’re happy with Stealth Strategy, and in a way it works even better, because you don’t need to be aware of another game like Commandos or Dark Souls.”
Are Mimimi worried that said fans and the wider gaming population more generally will just instantly revert back to calling them real-time tactics games? A little, perhaps, but Kraut says “the plan is to use this new genre label in all our communication efforts, ranging from the official game description to the trailers and so on. The very first thing that you will learn about Codename Süßkartoffel, aside from its official name and the setting, is that it’s an ‘all-new stealth streety game’ because it’s such an important message to us. I think we will have to see if it’s going to stick, if people will remember and actually use it. Then we might push for an own genre category on Steam and beyond.
“But we’d already consider our strategy to rename the genre a success if it helps to make the game’s concept easier to grasp for people, who are not yet familiar with our games or have been wary so far to try them out, because real-time tactics perhaps sounded too different or complicated. And not having to read dozens of different variations and interpretations of our game genre, something we encountered constantly with real-time tactics, would be the cherry on top.”
Real-Time Tactics needs a new name – and here is why
Shadow Tactics, Desperados III and Codename Süßkartoffel will be Stealth Strategy games from now on. We tell you, why that’s great news for us developers and you players.
With Shadow Tactics and Desperados III, we brought games similar to the beloved Commandos back. But they ignored a problem we are going to change now.
When hearing the term “genre” a lot of players are tempted to let out a big yawn – me too, I get it. It is part of my job as a Communications Manager to think about what makes a certain genre attractive. But as someone who loves games, I like to think more about the look and feel of it, rather than the name made up to describe it.
That is something Steam page algorithms can get into in order to hit me up with new interesting recommendations for the next big sale. But as tempting as it sounds to ignore categories like genres all together, it completely misses the point.
Because a genre can actually mean a lot and have a lot of impact on developers and players. It’s way more than a simple label.
“Stealth” and “Strategy” are already part of the most popular tags for Desperados III on Steam.
When a genre name is not enough …
Look at Soulslikes for example. The genre name was invented to describe games like Dark Souls but means a lot more to those who enjoy those games (I do, even so I hate myself for it sometimes!). It’s associated with brutal close-up combat, atmospheric dying worlds and more, forming a collection of images and memories from countless hours of defeat until you finally succeeded.
That’s what Soulslike really means to players and why it matters to call the games that. Because Action RPG, even so it is technically correct, will give you a completely different idea. It will remind you more of the never-ending tunnels and demon waves of dungeon crawlers like Diablo, rewarding your dangerous journey with powerful loot.
While a genre name can tell you a lot about a game, it can also deceive you or mean nothing at all if you aren’t familiar with it.
That proved a problem for Real-Time Tactics or RTT. Because there are so few newer games in this genre, it doesn’t make most people feel something. That’s why we put a lot of thought in finding a new name and why we firmly believe that “Stealth Strategy” does our genre more justice. This article explains the decision and what it means for our next game, Codename Süßkartoffel (Eng. “Codename Sweet Potato”).
Codename Süßkartoffel will be a Stealth Strategy game.
Why Real Time Tactics doesn’t work for us anymore
We cherish everyone who was a fan of Commandos back then and fell in love with our games because of it. But we also believe that there are players out there who would really enjoy our games, but don’t get what they are about from the genre name. There is a lot of potential for misunderstandings, because “Tactics” is usually associated with turn-based games.
And the essential stealth aspect is missing all together, which makes it really hard to grasp how a game labeled like that would actually be played.
In a Shooter, you obviously shoot something, while an RPG makes you play a certain role. But tactical thinking in a real-time scenario is way to abstract and complicated. It doesn’t really sound appealing and even gave us developers a hard time to convey what makes our games so enjoyable. Naturally, others struggled even more with it.
Commando-like or Strategy Game with Stealth?
We realized this while reading articles about our games or talking to fans during events. Most journalists would describe the game rather than using the genre name: Reviews talked about a new “Commando-like” or “Top-down Stealth Game” or even referred to Shadow Tactics as a “Strategy Game with Stealth”. They were trying to convey the game to their audience this way, because the genre name didn’t include what made them excited about Shadow Tactics or Desperados III.
It’s a similar story for the players who tried our games for the first time: They tell their friends things like “Hey, this new game, it’s like Metal Gear Solid, but in iso perspective” or “It’s like Assassin’s Creed, but actually stealthy again!”.
Stealth is an important aspect of Shadow Tactics and Desperados III.
They are excited about discovering a cool new game and want to share that emotion. But that only works if the other person relates to it and feels the spark as well.
Sadly, many players who don’t have friends like that or don’t come across a helpful article, will probably ignore our games, even so they would actually be a perfect match. Maybe you enjoy first person stealth games a lot – you would probably feel right at home, because you still sneak past enemies, take them out from the shadows or set up traps.
Even while controlling multiple characters in real-time, because of the pause function our games provide you with. But the genre name probably won’t get you interested in our games.
What the new genre means to us
Our vision is that everybody who likes strategy or stealth will enjoy our games. We really want players to be aware of that! Most are probably already familiar with the words “Stealth” and “Strategy” and know what they stand for.
They are associated with a lot of games that share similar strengths to ours – for example Dishonored or Hitman, where you approach tasks silently for the most part and find creative solutions in a sandbox environment. Or you think of strategy games like XCOM, where you combine the different skills and weapons of a group of characters and master encounters with clever thinking and strategic decisions.
Both bring together what makes our games resonate with a lot of people. You get the chance to outsmart a superior opponent or a large group of enemies and execute your own masterplan. All that careful planning in your head pays off in the end and lets you overcome situations that seemed impossible to solve earlier. You basically become Sherlock Holmes – just with mouse and keyboard (or a controller) in your hand.
Feeling like a mastermind when your plan works, is a big part of the Shadow Tactics and Desperados III experience.
Stealth Strategy is not only way easier to understand for a lot of people, but it also carries a lot of memories and emotions for everybody who enjoys those types of games. And the best part is, we don’t have to change our games to fit the new name.
We don’t need to create a new genre with Süßkartoffel, because our games have always been like that; we just lacked the perfect name to describe them properly. That means Shadow Tactics, Desperados 3 and technically even Commandos are Stealth Strategy games as well.
The next steps for Stealth Strategy
But of course, with Süßkartoffel on the horizon, we didn’t only think about renaming the genre and optimizing our communication. We also aim to push the ideas that defined the genre for us even further and explore new ones to compliment them. Instead of limiting our players to strict level constraints, we want them to be able to explore a sandbox with tons of possibilities and potential strategies.
This new freedom we embrace also renders Süßkartoffel more beginner friendly than our previous games. Of course, you can still challenge yourself and try to complete a mission flawlessly on hardcore settings, but it won’t be the only way to master the game.
We can’t wait to show you our Süßkartoffel and how it moves the genre forward, when it’s ready!
You can discover your own unique solution to every problem and play the game like you enjoy it the most. This time, everything really evolves around how creative you want to tackle each mission. Your choice matters and the way you want to play will truly define your experience in Süßkartoffel – not something we dictate you.
This is the vision we committed ourselves to while working on Codename Süßkartoffel and we are excited to share more details with you soon.
If you can’t wait to learn more about our next game and the future of Stealth Strategy, you can subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on social media, so you won’t miss any news.
For more intimate discussions with us and our community, join our Discord server and become a part of the Mimimi family. See you soon!
Laptop guy has no stats. Feck off.
Shadow Gambit Interview: Sneaking Treasures in the High Magic Sandbox World
The latest game "Shadow Gambit The Cursed Crew" (hereinafter referred to as Shadow Gambit) of the game company Mimimi Games, which has independently developed the "Shadow Tactics" series and "Bounty 3", will be released soon. At the new work preview event held the day before yesterday, we Watched the promotional PV of "Shadow Gambit" and some gameplay demonstrations, and connected to Mimimi Games' creative director dominic and chief planner Mike Gains to ask more details about the game settings and gameplay. The following is the specific content of the interview.
Q: As soon as the promotional video was released, we noticed that the protagonists of the new work are a group of ghost pirates. Why did you choose such a fantasy theme as the game background this time?
A: That's a good question, let's answer it quickly, because we have a lot of fans of the "Monkey Island" (a pirate-themed shooter game published by LucasArts) series in our studio, so mike and I finalized the plan for the pirate setting . However, the setting of "Shadow Gambit" has little to do with "Monkey Island". Many things in it come from my childhood ideas.
On the other hand, our team wanted to try something supernatural this time around, like sci-fi or magic, so don't you think "Ghost Fleet" is a great idea? So we made one.
Q: When it comes to pirates, I feel that they are always on the way to find treasure. Will the main story of the game be carried out in this way?
A: Yes, pirate stories always have freedom as their theme. In this work, you will embark on a journey in the Caribbean Sea, looking for mysterious treasures, and at the same time, beware of the pursuit of the "burning girl". The Burning Maidens are a church of fanatics who hate ghost pirates like you and your crew. Overall, you play as the eight main characters of the cursed fleet and help them find the fabled Black Pearl, whose soul power will allow you to unlock further crew members. Each of your crewmates is unique, full of personality, and has its own storyline, and you can choose which storyline to explore, which means that "Shadow Gambit" is not a linear narrative game.
Q: "Burning Girl"? It sounds like they are good at fire magic. Will the enemies in the level use magic against the player?
A: They're a fanatical religious order that hates magic as much as the Ghost Pirates, but they're a bunch of hypocrites (laughs), and like most evil villains, they'll do anything against you. They won't use visual magic like throwing a big fireball at you, but they will use some dastardly mind magic that you won't be able to detect intuitively.
Q: As mentioned earlier, the number of protagonists has increased to 8 this time. So, can players use 8 characters at the same time in the level?
A: There will be some large levels that allow you to fight with your entire crew, but this is very rare. In most cases, you can only use three crew members. We think this is a reasonable number, otherwise, there will always be a large group of people rushing into the enemy's stronghold, which is not too "stealth".
Q: Powerful supernatural magic is bound to greatly reduce the difficulty of stealth. Will this affect the overall challenge of the game?
A: Indeed, powerful spells will make sneaking relatively easy, but we also hope that the entry threshold can be lower this time, and the tactical choices can be more diversified, so that light players can wait less for SL, but We won't punish you if you keep using the same stealth tactics. Players who want more challenges can choose a higher difficulty at the beginning of the game. At this time, you have to be careful. In high difficulty, the difficulties you face will multiply and it will not be so smooth.
Q: When watching the demo of the real machine, I heard you repeatedly emphasize that this game has designed a new sandbox gameplay. Can you tell us in detail how the sandbox gameplay is different?
A: It mainly gives players more power to choose independently. You will discover more islands during the voyage. You can freely choose which one to go to and designate the crew you want to fight. The process of the level may be somewhat similar to our previous works, but there are many more factors that will affect the playing experience, such as landing time and crew combination.
For example, if you land at night, everyone's visibility will be reduced, your crew can sneak into some tight levels more easily, and you can also create light sources to interfere with the guards, which is different from the daytime play experience very different. Even at the same level, different players may have completely different playing experiences. You can feel that "Shadow Gambit" will bring a more dynamic world.
Q: Now that players are free to choose their next destination, will there be any changes in revisiting the islands they have visited before?
A: Under normal circumstances, it is not much different from the original, but if you trigger some island-related side missions, the layout of the island will also change according to the mission, that's all. We do have some lack of consideration for the replayability of open levels, but this is a good direction, and we will consider gradually improving this part of the content in subsequent updates.
Q: In the introduction of the game features, I noticed that the player will have a ghost ship as a base, so, will this game add some cultivation methods? For example, the ability to operate a fleet or upgrade the crew, similar to that in "The Age of Discovery".
A: There will be no gameplay such as upgrading ships or engaging in naval battles. The ghost ship is a stronghold for players to rest and prepare for battle. You can talk to the crew on the ship to open up some short hidden storylines. After this work, too many development elements will not be added. We still hope that the core gameplay of the game will focus on real-time stealth and assassination.
Q: Will there be DLC in the future?
A: No. But what is certain is that we will continue to update the game in the future, and all new content will be brought to you in the form of free updates.
Q: Will there be an official in the game's first launch? If so, will there be full Chinese dubbing?
A: Of course, we will provide Chinese players with localized simplified Chinese subtitles, but unfortunately, the voice pack only has two options, English and German.
Q: Finally, is there anything you want to say to Chinese players?
A: Thank you for playing the games we made. If you think there are any problems or omissions in "Shadow Gambit", please feel free to contact us.
This article was produced and published by Youmin Xingkong, and it is prohibited to reproduce without permission.
