Battle of Nations: a new idea

Dear knife throwers!

Today I am very enthusiastic. I’ve been thinking for a very long time about how to put a good game progression system, depth and meaning into the game beyond just breaking records. This afternoon I dreamed up Battle of Nations, a new gameplay mode, which is a strategy, online community experience, and gives casual players an interesting exploration challenge on a huge map. In the next update, you’ll see the random map generator, which is much better, more varied than I’d hoped, and will form the basis of this new game mode, which may eventually become the main game mode.

Battle of nations – the system

The current WR system on a limited number of levels is not very good, because new players have no chance and the records are getting harder to break. But it’s good to keep it as “official” stuff.
In the Battle of Nations system a game would last 1-2 months. These are like “seasons”, which have their own winners who get the eternal trophy. But from time to time, they will be restarted with new map and features, so both the old and new players will have a fresh experience. The casual player will also find their place. There are quite a lot of possibilities, as a random generator is used to generate a huge map with a lot of levels (the picture shows a 25×25 version with 625 maps). But it might be better to have more, up to 100×100 (10,000), because the more levels, the more player can enjoy the game by increasing their country power.
Competitive yet cooperative because countries are battling (but you can see individual top players – who can be the “king” of those nations).

Map creation

We (the devs) make a huge map with forests, rivers, bridges, zombie areas, easier plains and harder mountains (with more targets), even one or two treasure areas, areas playable only with specific weapons. For example, if an area has both forest and water, the generator will turn on the “forest” and “water” random modules on those. But we can add tunnels, fortresses, one huge central main castle, and the software creates any combination of these. If you doubt that random levels can be good I tell you I’m also working on a level editor where the players can create any shape of object on the levels with cutting edges and pointing spikes, and also a weapon editor with the same possibilites. But I think that random levels will be very good either.

Countries

There are one fixed capitals on the edge of the map for each country. This is a level reserved for all countries, it cannot be occupied. So how it works? All players see and play the same generated levels. The world scoring system is the same as in current version. Whoever has the world record on a level owns that level with his country. When a player clicks on this game mode, this map comes up showing them which areas they can go to. He can only ever go to the field next to the field which already belongs to his country. He can explore a new level (grey), attack if the adjacent level belongs to another country, or reinforce an already occupied level. The conquered neighbouring levels merge into a big common country. All the levels will be all discovered sooner or later and the countries will have to go against each other until the current season ends.

More future ideas

In the case of a battle, you can say that although the level is the same, but in addition, soldiers of that country come (similar to zombie mode), carrying a flag in their hands. Actually we can make that they will defend a castle (we already have similar levels in the game). If there will be player cosmetics, then the current defending WR player of that level will rush towards them, or maybe the king himself (if he played on that level the last time). Maybe an area’s defense can be upgraded, players can move up in rank and then they are a sawblade throwing defender.

To consider that the levels of the defeated country could be captured in one go, colonized so to speak, and could be recaptured by recapturing the colonial center. Or maybe we could test a quick way, where the larger country absorbs the smaller one, and the defeated country players continue to play as zombies or slaves (still they have a chance to get some reward).

To make the game more even, it might be more appropriate not to split it into countries, but to have races (e.g. forest people living in trees and maybe with special abilities) and the game would even out the strong and weak players (so it wouldn’t be unfair to have 10x as many players in one country).

If someone doesn’t want to compete, they can go exploring, by completing undiscovered easier levels and increasing the size of his country. You could find treasures while exploring, a chest on a given map that contains something: it could even help you in battle somehow. Maybe you can find an oasis which multiplies the value of the level and is kept as a secret because the opponent can’t see which level it is without entering that level. Or you could set up a trap, install a mine that if someone steps on it, one of their hand will be torn off and they can only throw 5 knives that day, or just cosmetically dishonor that character.

Premium membership
I’d don’t want to put advertisements in the mobile versions, but obviously we have to fund the development. One idea is that only premium players can play in certain locations, i.e. special weapon levels. I will not make it a pay-to-win, but I’d like to add some attractive feature for those who would support the development.

So that’s today’s brainstorm in my head. I’d be interested to hear what you think, so join us on our DISCORD CHANNEL.

Bests,

Mate

developer

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