Brand new trailer and some notes on single player news

About the new trailer

Just in case you didn't spot it last time around, here's a brand new trailer. It features original music by myself and showcases some of the critical reaction we've had to the game so far.

It also shows off the action side of the game a bit more: this is something our community have told us that we needed to do with a trailer and I think it's worked here.

Notes on the single player

We're currently doing tests of the single player. At the moment, this involves Ian mocking up different mission types and us having a quick bash at them. He's essentially crafting a "core" mission, and then using certain amounts of random generation, both of the level geometry and unit placement to create something that plays in a subtly different way each time.

On top of that, there are a couple of other tricks we're going to be using to make the levels dynamic. At the moment, I don't want to go further into specifics, but it's looking like we can have missions of all different shapes and sizes. Most of the things you'd like to be able to do in Frozen Synapse are, at the moment, looking possible. We may change things around and opt for a more constrained approach if some of these proto-missions don't work out, so I don't want to get peoples' hopes up too much, but as I said, at the moment, it's looking like there's a lot of potential in the system.

Secondary to that, we're going to start work soon on the progression system: what does it mean when you win or lose a level? What happens to you between missions, and what is the context of what you're trying to accomplish. Hopefully, this is where some of the existing backstory and world will come into play.

I want to put people's fears at rest that the single player will be, in some way, bolted on. That is not what we're doing here: Ian is getting very motivated and excited by the design potential; I'm primarily a single player gamer, so this component of Frozen Synapse is something that is very dear to my heart. The single player will be chunky and it will be good!

By making and releasing the MP part of the game first, we hoped to both do that side of things justice and also get at the core of what Frozen Synapse is supposed to be. Having done that, we can then use the knowledge to fuel a great single player game.

I badly want to release some screenshots and details but it's still too early - we need to keep working on it and then hopefully we should have some more info to announce soon.

Promo

Finally, remember that you can currently pre-order Frozen Synapse and get 25% off if you use the code INDIEPOWER.