Death March is a game prototype that I’ve been working on in 30 minute increments for a month or two. It’s a simple turn based strategy game that attempts to tap into some of the deductive skills required by games like Battleship and Minesweeper.
In it’s current form, it’s pretty rough and has temporary placeholder graphics. I’m really just trying to work out the game play and core piece types I will need. Ultimately, this will be a multiplayer game but right now it has a simple single player game.
Gameplay
Pieces on the board move forward. If there is no space to move then they will melee attack the piece in front of them. Different piece types can take or do different amounts of damage. If a piece makes it to the other side of the board then that player wins.
Pieces block the view of the piece behind them creating a sort of ‘fog of war’. Part of the game is trying to determine what those pieces might be in order to properly deploy your own troops.
Each placed piece type also deducts resources from your storeroom. If there are not enough resources to place a piece then that piece will remain unplaced. Keep a close eye on your resource counts to avoid placing pieces that won’t appear.
Piece Placement and Action Selection
In your turn, you select pieces below the bottom row of the board. These are the pieces that will move into play at the end of the turn. If there are any pieces on the board that have additional actions, you can also select them at this time. (Right click on a piece, select the action, then select a target.)
Once the piece types have been placed and all actions have been selected, you can click “End Turn”.
Turn Effects
Once both players have ended their turn then the turn actions are performed. Any piece-specific actions and melee attacks are run first. After that, each piece moves forward if it can. The player can view the effects of the turn to deduce information about the other player’s piece deployment. The other player’s resource deductions are also available.
Current Piece Types
Peasant
The peasant is the simplest piece type. It costs only one gold piece. It does one point of melee damage and has one hit point. It has no special actions.
Conscript
The conscript is a peasant with armor. It costs 2 gold, 1 wood, and 1 leather. It does one point of melee damage. It also only has one hit point but it can also take one point of armor damage. It has no special actions.
Spearman
A Spearman has additional attack capabilities. It costs 2 gold, 1 wood, 1 leather, and 1 steel. Like the conscript, it only has one hitpoint and can take one point of armor damage. It does two points of melee damage. If supplied by a squire then it can also throw a spear for one point of ranged damage.
Squire
The Squire attacks and defends like a conscript but can also supply spears to spearmen in adjacent squares. This piece costs 3 gold, 1 wood, and 1 steel. It carries three spears that it can hand out until they are gone.
Archer
The archer is a weak melee fighter but can perform up to four ranged attacks. It costs 3 gold, 2 wood, and 1 leather. It does one point of melee damage or one point of ranged damage to a target. It has only one hit point and no armor.
Wizard
Wizards are powerful allies that can apply a blanket magic shield to an area of the board as well as perform ranged spell attacks. It costs 2 gold an 9 mana. The mana used to create the wizard is directly fed into the spells it casts or used to absorb damage to it or the immediately surrounding pieces. Once the mana is depleted, no more damage will be absorbed.
The wizard has three spell attacks:
- Magic Missile: costs 4 mana and does only one point of damage. Completely bypasses armor and shielding.
- Fireball: costs 4 mana and does fire damage to a single enemy. Right now this is only one point of damage but will eventually linger for up to two more turns.
- Fire rain: costs all 9 mana and blankets a 3×3 area around an enemy with 1 point each of instant fire damage.
Downloads
Windows .exe version of the Death March prototype.
The platform-independent version of the Death March prototype. Includes all jars for all platforms with startup scripts for windows and Linux.