Update:
Video of the PAX demo (starts 1 hour in).
----
I was surprised that Phantom Brigade didn't get much coverage from its presence at PAX East last month. It was one of the highlights of the show for me so I might as well gush (ramble) about it here. Unfortunately there isn't any gameplay footage of the demo for public display so bear with me here as I try to explain it with my notes and a whiteboard I have lying around. There's a lot to unpack here and I've got an hour to kill before I can take some cold medication and go to bed.
As a brief refresher on the game: Phantom Brigade was announced a couple years ago as a turn based strategy game that featured customizable mechs and a high level of destruction (for units and the environments you battled them in). The game got a good number of development updates over the years but went dark a little while ago as the company making the game, Tetragon Works merged with the Crypt of the Necrodancer developer, Brace Yourself Games. The team from Tetragon Works went on to help out on BYG's city builder, Industries of Titan so Phantom Brigade took a backseat for a bit.
Apparently during beta testing Phantom Brigade there was feedback about the overall speed of things so the team went on to tear it apart and rebuild it with real-time elements back in February. The PAX demo was focused on getting the essentials up and running so it didn't feature all the elements seen in earlier videos (things like fiery ashes raining down from the sky as battlefield conditions worsened) and the presentation might have been a bit spotty at times but it did a great job selling the new combat.
Taken from a turn-based build of the game. The perspective and look is pretty much the same aside from UI differences.
The demo kicks off simply enough. You're on a training mission testing new predictive technology and moving around the map. Featuring a view that's similar to previous gameplay shown from the game, all you have to is select the tutorial waypoints and then the "end command". The predictive element is then introduced with a simple UI pop up that looks like a video timeline you'd see in a multimedia editor.
Now when you select your move order a bar appears and stretches out as you move further and further from your character's position with the mouse. This reflects the time that it will take for the movement to occur (I think the window was 5 seconds) and now once you confirm the order the mech will move and as that happens the "5" next to the timeline will start counting down and the movement bar will start shifting off-screen to the left.
You do another turn or two of that before a tank appears that you are told to destroy. This is where things start to come together. You select your movement order as before, but now as you scroll though the timeline (moving the mouse left and right) you see the tank roll across its own movement line along with showing a direction that it intends to fire towards. Now, with the attack command, you can drop a new item on the timeline. A couple second long "track" that represents your mech attacking. Once confirming the time you want the attack to happen, you select the direction/target and let it run.
Now when the timer runs down your mech will start attacking when the attack "track" hits the left hand side of the timeline even if you are moving at the time. At the end of destroying the tank you're brought into a nice in-game cutscene that transitions you to a another part of the battlefield where the actual fight for the demo starts.
You're now thrown against a handful of tanks and a single enemy mech (think they're called Walkers) and it's a doozy of a fight. You have two Walkers of your own to fight them off and apparently it was rare for the demo to end in victory. So the odds are pretty stacked against you. It was in this bigger battle that you could now set your own commands in the timeline and not being directed by the tutorial.
This took me a bit to grasp but you aren't limited by actions in the game, it's really just time. Say you wanted a move a Walker to a close position (1 second or so) while immediately firing your shotgun at a close tank. That still leaves more time on the board so go ahead and make another short movement order and start firing off another set of rounds. Anything that doesn't complete in the 5 second window (starting an attack that doesn't have time to finish) will just carry over to the next "turn".
So once things get going it's a lot to keep track of but it can lead to more creative actions occurring in a single turn. For example when one of my Walkers lost the ability to attack (mechs are modular and can have limbs blown off) the lead on the game suggested I ram into a tank (overtaking it from behind) while also ordering my pilot to eject. The idea being that the pilot would eject and the forward momentum of the walk would still carry the discarded mech into the tank,. In practice I misjudged the timing and ejected too early (not enough momentum to carry me forward) but the idea was tantalizing.
The fight went on from there with me trying to dart my other Walker between houses for cover (the maps still keep a lot of destructibility, your weapons can chew through those structures) but I ended up making my unit collide with a tank from the side which sent them tripping into some trees. I got lucky with the AI going after the ejected Walker but I ended up timing out and having the demo end before I could turn things around in my favor, if that was even possible.
Note: These things were talked about in dev videos for the game before the switch to the current battle system, so they may not exist in the same form (perhaps even changed entirely) but there's more to the game than just combat. Like I mentioned your mechs are all modular so limbs/weapons can be blown off which will play into the management/customization aspect of the game (recovering/repairing parts) that has a real great looking setup.
There was also talk in those dev updates about something more akin to a "Nemesis System" where enemy combatants, provided they eject and aren't killed in battle, would grow in strength as they fight you, but I didn't think to ask if that feature was still in the game during the demo so TBA on that. As for platforms Phantom Brigade was announced as a PC and console title and, while the UI seems especially suited to a mouse now, that still is the plan apparently but specific consoles are TBA.
All in all it was a riot of a demo. Being able to pack more than one set of instructions into a "turn" really opened my eyes to the depth this system could have. Mix that in with the existing gameplay structure shown in earlier videos and I'm more excited than ever to see more of the game. I really think this could be something special.
Old dev videos in a playlist.
Video of the PAX demo (starts 1 hour in).
----
I was surprised that Phantom Brigade didn't get much coverage from its presence at PAX East last month. It was one of the highlights of the show for me so I might as well gush (ramble) about it here. Unfortunately there isn't any gameplay footage of the demo for public display so bear with me here as I try to explain it with my notes and a whiteboard I have lying around. There's a lot to unpack here and I've got an hour to kill before I can take some cold medication and go to bed.
As a brief refresher on the game: Phantom Brigade was announced a couple years ago as a turn based strategy game that featured customizable mechs and a high level of destruction (for units and the environments you battled them in). The game got a good number of development updates over the years but went dark a little while ago as the company making the game, Tetragon Works merged with the Crypt of the Necrodancer developer, Brace Yourself Games. The team from Tetragon Works went on to help out on BYG's city builder, Industries of Titan so Phantom Brigade took a backseat for a bit.
Apparently during beta testing Phantom Brigade there was feedback about the overall speed of things so the team went on to tear it apart and rebuild it with real-time elements back in February. The PAX demo was focused on getting the essentials up and running so it didn't feature all the elements seen in earlier videos (things like fiery ashes raining down from the sky as battlefield conditions worsened) and the presentation might have been a bit spotty at times but it did a great job selling the new combat.
Taken from a turn-based build of the game. The perspective and look is pretty much the same aside from UI differences.
The demo kicks off simply enough. You're on a training mission testing new predictive technology and moving around the map. Featuring a view that's similar to previous gameplay shown from the game, all you have to is select the tutorial waypoints and then the "end command". The predictive element is then introduced with a simple UI pop up that looks like a video timeline you'd see in a multimedia editor.
Now when you select your move order a bar appears and stretches out as you move further and further from your character's position with the mouse. This reflects the time that it will take for the movement to occur (I think the window was 5 seconds) and now once you confirm the order the mech will move and as that happens the "5" next to the timeline will start counting down and the movement bar will start shifting off-screen to the left.
You do another turn or two of that before a tank appears that you are told to destroy. This is where things start to come together. You select your movement order as before, but now as you scroll though the timeline (moving the mouse left and right) you see the tank roll across its own movement line along with showing a direction that it intends to fire towards. Now, with the attack command, you can drop a new item on the timeline. A couple second long "track" that represents your mech attacking. Once confirming the time you want the attack to happen, you select the direction/target and let it run.
Now when the timer runs down your mech will start attacking when the attack "track" hits the left hand side of the timeline even if you are moving at the time. At the end of destroying the tank you're brought into a nice in-game cutscene that transitions you to a another part of the battlefield where the actual fight for the demo starts.
You're now thrown against a handful of tanks and a single enemy mech (think they're called Walkers) and it's a doozy of a fight. You have two Walkers of your own to fight them off and apparently it was rare for the demo to end in victory. So the odds are pretty stacked against you. It was in this bigger battle that you could now set your own commands in the timeline and not being directed by the tutorial.
This took me a bit to grasp but you aren't limited by actions in the game, it's really just time. Say you wanted a move a Walker to a close position (1 second or so) while immediately firing your shotgun at a close tank. That still leaves more time on the board so go ahead and make another short movement order and start firing off another set of rounds. Anything that doesn't complete in the 5 second window (starting an attack that doesn't have time to finish) will just carry over to the next "turn".
So once things get going it's a lot to keep track of but it can lead to more creative actions occurring in a single turn. For example when one of my Walkers lost the ability to attack (mechs are modular and can have limbs blown off) the lead on the game suggested I ram into a tank (overtaking it from behind) while also ordering my pilot to eject. The idea being that the pilot would eject and the forward momentum of the walk would still carry the discarded mech into the tank,. In practice I misjudged the timing and ejected too early (not enough momentum to carry me forward) but the idea was tantalizing.
The fight went on from there with me trying to dart my other Walker between houses for cover (the maps still keep a lot of destructibility, your weapons can chew through those structures) but I ended up making my unit collide with a tank from the side which sent them tripping into some trees. I got lucky with the AI going after the ejected Walker but I ended up timing out and having the demo end before I could turn things around in my favor, if that was even possible.
Note: These things were talked about in dev videos for the game before the switch to the current battle system, so they may not exist in the same form (perhaps even changed entirely) but there's more to the game than just combat. Like I mentioned your mechs are all modular so limbs/weapons can be blown off which will play into the management/customization aspect of the game (recovering/repairing parts) that has a real great looking setup.
There was also talk in those dev updates about something more akin to a "Nemesis System" where enemy combatants, provided they eject and aren't killed in battle, would grow in strength as they fight you, but I didn't think to ask if that feature was still in the game during the demo so TBA on that. As for platforms Phantom Brigade was announced as a PC and console title and, while the UI seems especially suited to a mouse now, that still is the plan apparently but specific consoles are TBA.
All in all it was a riot of a demo. Being able to pack more than one set of instructions into a "turn" really opened my eyes to the depth this system could have. Mix that in with the existing gameplay structure shown in earlier videos and I'm more excited than ever to see more of the game. I really think this could be something special.
Old dev videos in a playlist.
Last edited:
