'84: Tails of Valor
A downloadable game for Windows
Project Status: Early Alpha Demo
'84: Tails of Valor is a turn-based combined arms strategy, inspired by the likes of Wargame, Advance Wars, and classic Socialist cartoons. In a fictional alternate 1984, three nations - the Human Alliance, Volkisch Reich, and Soviet Agricultural Union - fight over the right to literally eat one another alive.
The Story
Since time immemorial, man has lived alongside the mammalian races: a diverse group of sentient, non-human species. Enslaved and exterminated by humans for millennia, few could expect a life beyond showing up on the dinner table of a human, or at the end of his gun.
Of course, that's all in the past; nearly a century ago, the human alliance swore a pact against the continued mistreatment of sentient non-humans. The consumption of mammalian meat was banned, carnivores and herbivores were given chunks of land out in the humans' backwater, and the two groups were finally given the opportunity to raise their own sovereign nations.
As if that was ever going to help. In the Carnivore nation, a charismatic leader has arisen, promising to restore Carnivores to the rightful place at the top of the food chain and Herbivores to theirs - filleted and seared, medium-rare. Herbivores live in a crushingly brutal dictatorship, its eyes ever paranoid of the enemies around every corner, just waiting to sell them out to the despicable Human scum.
Though the consumption of mammal meat is banned in the Human territories, the black market for meat is a billion-dollar industry, and most humans either consume or knows someone who consumes it on a regular basis. The Human Alliance, a patchwork coalition of disparate nations, is politically divided and constantly at one another's throats.
Fish tires the palate after a while, you know? The dealers promise it's all ethically sourced - from people who died a natural, or accidental, death - so really, what's the problem? Why you gotta ask so many questions? Besides, humans are superior to those animals, anyway.
What's Currently Here
Currently, you can play a single skirmish, with a single faction's worth of units (Minus a few that aren't done yet) playable. Both sides use the same units at the moment in a barebones "Commander Hunt" gamemode. Be warned that, being an early alpha demo, the game is rather void of content and can be beaten in roughly a minute, if you know the right cheese strats. The primary mechanics are all working, but the AI is still very rudimentary. I've only been at it for about a month and I'm seeking feedback to help improve the game's fundamentals while I start work on the bulk of story content.
Right now, we only have a Windows executable build available, but if there is demand I can look into getting build pipelines up for Mac OS and Linux. The game is programmed entirely in Python, using the Pygame library, and is compiled using Nuitka. The performance is pretty lousy, I'm looking into ways to speed it up a bit. Some antiviruses seem to flag it as malicious - I assure you that this is a false positive. Play it in a VM if it makes you feel any better.
Roadmap
- Rewrite with mod support in mind
- Air mechanics
- Sea mechanics
- UI overhaul
- Art pass
- 10 factions with unique playstyles
- Linear campaign
Download
Development log
- Update 0.0.5 (14th October)Oct 14, 2023
- Update 0.0.4 (13th October)Oct 13, 2023
Comments
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Do you plan to add NSFW content in this game? I suggest adding minigame like this game below once you captured enemy commander.
https://cowardlion.itch.io/bedrooms-on-the-moon
wtf dude
while i'm not entirely opposed to the idea I think this really isn't the direction the developer intends their project to go.
the game itself is good but lacks of anti air units perhaps like mobile SAM.
And we need enemy design cause it looks like we're just shooting our guys with different colors
AI need improvements too, cause almost everytime they just yolo and die even though they know they will be killed
Seems like AI lacks the ability to properly shield its CV, the AI is only capable of hiding its CV somewhere in a dense forest tile.
Played a few matches in grassland map, sometimes AI sends its CV away as if its a scout if there's no dense forest tile.
Shielding the CV, as in protecting the CV by surrounding the CV with units. Its a turtle strategy to prevent TOW snipe on CV.
Is it normal that the AI is less likely to send scout-snipers first?
The best way to cheese the game is deploy scout-sniper + artilleries. As long as the sniper is well-placed and didn't die, artillery can take out almost anything.
The AI is able to send scouts, flank and snipe command vehicle. But sometimes it didn't send scout-snipers at all, instead, it sends cargo truck to the frontlines, treating cargo trucks like a scout.....
AI is very basic right now. Don't worry, there will be improvements. Keep giving as much feedback as you can, though!
Suggestion: Add civilian rescue mission? Just like XCOM?
For example,
Carnivores/Herbivores/Humans are trying to start a massacre on targeted community to gain support from radicals, and your army is tasked with evacuating civilians?
Contact civilians by standing near them, then escort them to evacuation point either on foot, or with vehicular transport?
Add some civilians who are heavily armed with AK-74 and molotov cocktails, or lightly armed with TOZ-28 to resist the aggressors? Show the importance of having gun rights for civilians?
That would increase the uniqueness of the game compared to Advance Wars.
Yeah I wanna have some really unique mission types. This is just the demo, though