Thanks Clark!
Dear
LOS fans,
I am very happy to get in touch with this community. From the day I met Clark Browning I have been looking at a way to do a digital adaptation of
Legions of Steel. I believe this version of LOS should be faithful in spirit and rules to the original one. In order to achieve that it needs to be developed independently, as the involvement of a publisher would probably lead to a setting change (I have been suggested to change the Commandos to counter-terrorist units and Machines to zombies, don’t laugh) and gameplay alteration. Crowdfunding gives us the opportunity to do the game we want. We aim at launching the Kickstarter campaign around August 15.
In the next following days we will be contacting a lot of people to spread the word, as a crowdfunding project requires a lot of communication, but I wanted you to be the very first informed.
In terms of project status, the pre-production and preliminary research are done. The first thing that was settled was the technology. We are using the Unity engine. Firstly we wanted to be able to easily port the game on other platforms in the future, secondly because we have used it for other project and are familiar with it, and finally because the community of Unity-developers here in Angoulême is growing rapidly so we can talk about it over lunch
We did not change a line of the backstory. Honestly we thought about it, and quickly came to the conclusion there is no benefit to alter the original setting. Gameplay-wise the digital version will be extremely close to the board one, minus a few rules that can not be translated straightforwardly (Leadership points interrupts of course). Few unanswered questions still remain, but we plan to involve the community and ask you (and other potentially interested gamers) to choose between options. We would like to release those questions during the Kickstarter campaign. We decided to modernize the art direction though, and bring some cosmetic changes to the way characters and equipment look. I hope you guys will like it. It was part of the fun on our end to try to re-imagine how weapons and armors should look like. Our artists are currently working hard to allow us to release new artworks during and after the campaign.
We chose to develop the game for IOS and Android because they are natural and popular platforms for this type of games. Things are getting really serious now on smartphones and tablets for board and wargames lovers, and we have seen a real quality jump in the past year with very solid productions. However we do not close the door to other platforms if the demand is strong.
We really hope you guys will help us with the word of mouth among your friends and social networks. The Legions of Steel rules system has many strong features to make it shine among tactical games, but we need to shout it to the world if we want to make this digital version happen.
Do not forget we are available for any question you may have (here or through our website/social network pages), and we hope to see you for the kickoff of the crowdfunding campaign, which I will announce here of course.
Final note: I have read some of you would be keen on re-launching the physical game. Perhaps our digital crowdfunding campaign, and then released game, could be a springboard for the board game version. I invite you to think about it. As long as Clark is aware and backing the project, we would be delighted to bring help and support.