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Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

https://cattanherself.itch.io/the-cycle-of-war-trench-assault
The Cycle Of War: Trench Assault
Minimanlist WW1 inspired strategy game
Programmed by me (Cattan), using a music from Videvo and a few sounds from Freesound.org.
The game contains war themes including a parody of hostile rhetoric. No visible gore or anything of the sort, people are only represented by circles and graphics are generally very minimalist.
Time zone UTC+2 (CEST)

Really good! I'll readily admit I'm not great at flying this ship. But hey, it works perfectly fine on my AZERTY keyboard; that alone makes you better at game making than most AAA titles I've played.
Had fun despite my clumsiness. And I really like the writing too.

Thank you. I'll be honest, making the unit placement work was probably the hardest part of making the game.

Thanks a lot! I'm happy you like it.

Hello again, it's been a few days!
... Uh oh, it has been a few days.

Anyway, great news everyone the game is now finished and playable over at: https://cattanherself.itch.io/the-cycle-of-war-trench-assault

I was planning to write a more expensive log to celebrate yesterday but unfortunately I find myself a bit under the weather and I don't really have the energy to write things in details. Still, I wanted to take some time to go over what I did during the last few days.

The week started with my first build of the game in WebGL. I handed it to a few people to get some early feedbacks and see which ways of breaking the game they could think of. With this done I continued working on including the mortars and barbed wires and... To my great surprise this was no big challenge. Artillery added a really good component to the game because it allowed the player to tip the scales during the battle. So far the player could "edge their bets" by placing ladders and guns in a clever way, but once the battle started that was it...
Well not anymore! Being able to see something going wrong and (attempt to) fix it adds tension and helps combat frustration. Unsurprisingly.

Next up came a pass on the UI. So far I had worked with a mostly placeholder UI, and I was honestly a little bit afraid of TextMeshPro. It turned out to be fine once I looked at it in more details. During the course of this UI pass however, I got the idea of adding some flavour text here and there. When finishing a battle, the player will now have a random quote from a character in the game's world (though none are named). Which means, that's right, we have Cycle Of War lore now! Additionally I should mention that this has been a lovely occasion to design a random insult generator: At the end of a battle, some text explains how many casualties each side took, and the RED nation is each time called a different, randomly selected pejorative adjective. This was more fun to do than challenging if I'm honest but hey I'm allowed to have fun with my own video games, right,

Last but not least came the sound implementation. As discussed last weekend I already had selected the music and the sounds I wanted in the game, but of course when the time came to actually implement them I noticed some things I did not like and did a few modifications.
Gone are the drums that were supposed to play in between assault, replaced by the sounds of distant combat. As I mentioned before I dislike using too much music, and it felt like there was just not enough time between assaults to appreciate it anyway. The result is interesting because it creates a strong contrast with the go-lucky music that plays during an assault.

Then came a short phase of closed test which finally give birth to the finished game. It's been a short but really interesting journey and I am definitely happy to have participated in the jam. I learned a few things but most importantly I solidified my knowledge: I turned theoretical, academic knowledge of Unity and game development into experience and the beginning of a portfolio. To say that this is invaluable is an understatement.

You're doing really good! The gameplay and especially the movement look really solid.

Hello again and welcome back to the front! I am still Cattan and this is still The Cycle Of War: Trench Assault
It's been a week already and much progress was made. I'm happy to say that the game is technically playable from start to finish! Of course it's not yet finished at all: The UI is still basic, sound implementation is only just starting and some of the core features are still missing ; but a player can press the start button, play the game and eventually reach the point where the game says "Game over: You win" or "Game over: You lose". That's a big step! Today I'm going to talk a little bit about graphics, sound design, planned features and game design. Without further delay, let me put on my graphics designer hat...

Graphics

You may remember from the previous log that I was considering keeping my little circles. Well you may be please to know I decided to commit to this and even double down: I've added little soldiers holding the ladders and crewing the different weapons at their disposal.

The mighty BLUE army stands ready to assault the puny RED trenches.
I must admit once I added those tiny circles, my heart said this was the right choice. I can't help but find them cute, with their rifles that can hold more bullets than they have polygons. I had considered giving them hats and make the two factions look more distinct but ended up deciding against it for reasons I will discus at the end of this log.

Sound Design
Sounds in general have yet to be implemented, though the design part of it is mostly done. The original intent was to have a military march play throughout the assault phase, with some battle sounds happening here and there (soldiers dying, guns reloading, mortars, etc...). That march will be none other than a royalty free version of When Johnny Comes Marching Home. If you don't know it, it is very upbeat and says, in a nutshell, that everyone will be happy when a soldier called Johnny comes back home after the war. Of course it may feel less uplifting when combined with the sound of agonising little circles but that's just life.
Outside of the assault phase, the game will simply have a low rumbling of drums to give an atmosphere of "war" without occupying the soundscape too much: I personally dislike over prevalence of music.

Features Review
Over the course of iterating and testing, a few things have changed and a few have improved. Ladders now have a small random area where they can spawn soldiers. It's not much but it does scatter them a little more and makes the battlefield look more alive since it isn't just a few perfect lines of soldiers advancing together but more of a charging mob. Machineguns have seen their firing arc reduced and, as a trade-off, a new type of defending unit was added: The sentries. They are normal soldiers with rifles in the trench and shoot much slower, but over a much larger angle than the machine guns.
Mortars are still in the process of being added, the way they will work is that the amount of mortars on the field will give the player (or the computer) a number of "shells" that can be freely used with the mouse during the assault phase; these can be used to destroy barbed wires or stun defenders for a time. Of course the player's little circles are not immune to their own artillery but, once again, that's just life.
With the speed at which I am working, I am confident everything will be done and functional a day or two before the deadline. Here's hoping!

Game Design
I have honestly surprised myself earlier today when I noticed I was actually playing the game for the sake of playing rather than testing. While very bare-bones and repetitive, the game is fun. I caught myself rooting for the little circles and watching the bullets fly by them; I was trying to guess who was going to get hit when. The crux of it, I believe, is that I have made a fairly elaborate game of chance: There is a predictable randomness to the pattern of the guns firing and the soldiers advancing and it is fun to try and piece it together. Though maybe that's just my Asperger speaking.
Still, when the machineguns reload and a push finally looks like it's coming together, I watch with baited breath as I count the seconds before the gun starts firing again. I am really interested to see how using the mortars to stun the guns even longer would affect this, and I believe it will make it more exciting.

Now I should also address a few other things: As I mentioned earlier, I have decided not to make the factions distinct, and you may have caught me making light of the suffering of the poor little circles. That is linked to what I want this game to express: A ridiculous parody of war. I would like to portray an entirely senseless conflict with no better justification than an over-the-top "we are good and they are bad" rhetoric. That is of course a tall order for a small game like this, but I hope it can feel apparent to players once the game is complete.


That's all for today. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more news from the front!

Hello everyone, I am Cattan and welcome to the first devlog of "The Cycle of War: Trench Assault".
I signed up for this game jam not too sure of what I was going to do and hoping the theme would point me in the right direction once announced. Originally it did not but after a bit of thinking, bouncing ideas with fellow jammers and rewatching Sam Mendes' 1917, I realised that something like trench warfare fits the idea of a "cycle" very well. Too well: In essence, it is an endless cycle of attacking and defending the same trench for no immediately discernable reason. And so an idea was born.

Okay but what's the game?

An excellent question, thank you for asking.
It was very quickly obvious to me that I would be making a sort of "strategy" game (though it is actually set at the operational level, not strategic, but that is entirely irrelevant). The idea would be for the player to prepare the assault of the enemy trench or the defence of their own, then watch in horror as the little sprites execute their orders and die gruesome deaths. Being a one-woman team, I wanted to keep the scope small and limit my reliance on external assets ; I looked a bit but it quickly became clear that the game would have to be 2D so that I would be able to cobble together sprites myself. Hence my lovely art style:

These circles have no idea what they're in for!

As implied above, the game would be divided into two phases: One where the player prepares the battle by placing assault ladders, mortars, guns and barbed wire, and a second more passive phase where the player would enjoy the mess the helped create ; I will try to implement call-in artillery strikes during the assault phase as well as a time acceleration mode ; but those are optional feature if I have enough time left. I originally planned to replace the little circles but to be honest, they are starting to grow on me... Or perhaps that is just their ghosts haunting me.

Early prototype.

The first thing I did, after quickly making a few basic sprites, was test the waters: This being my first game, I am not skilled enough in either Unity or C# to feel confident I can deliver. I began by making my soldiers move and shoot their rifles, then made the ladders spawn soldiers (it's how they go over the top) and then made the bullets destroy the heinous enemy circles. Satisfied that this was working, I went on to design a basic UI and game instructions:

It's a machinegun where the mortar should be but it's not like anyone can tell. I mean it's not like I could spot the typo, so...

By now after two days of work, the prototype allows the player to navigate the menu, start playing and place their ladders. The next step will be to allow the computer to place its own defences in retaliation. This should be fairly easy: The plan is to have a number of pre-set locations and have the computer roll the dice for which location to chose. If I have time, I would like to also implement a rudimentary "AI" that would take into account where the player has placed their resources and try to counter them. For instance it could read where the player's ladders are, and spawn its machineguns to face them to the best of its ability.

Speaking of the computer's ability to place objects, 

Here is one method my humble beginner self is fairly proud of: I originally wanted it to spawn the ladders in the player's "inventory" before they could be placed on the trench line, but halfway through I realised that it could absolutely be used for any of the player's resources. And so SpawnRessource was born. So far the entire project has been a great learning opportunity but this method in particular was a bit of a eureka moment. I look forward to having more of those over the next two weeks.

That's it for now, thank you for reading! Stay tuned for more news from the frontlines!