• Translation

Last year, German developer Mimimi Productions attracted great attention to his real-time tactical stealth game Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, inspired by old titles like Desperados and Commandos.

Shadow Tactics has an intriguing design (see). It became a huge success for Mimimi - despite the fact that the company almost collapsed during the release process. You can read more about how this happened (and the lessons the developers learned) in this honest postmortem of the game, written by fellow Mimimi founders Johannes Roth and Dominic Abe.

About a year ago, Mimimi was still little known. Our previous 3D action adventure The Last Tinker: City of Colors performed well, but did not attract a large audience.

By December 2016, our biggest dreams had come true: Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, our declaration of love for Commandos And Desperados, finally came out and won recognition from players and the press.

At the same time, we were almost bankrupt and had already fired most of the team. We no longer had money to survive another month.

In this postmortem, two of Mimimi's founders, Dominique Abe (Creative Director) and Johannes Roth (Managing Director), detail what they got right and what they got (horribly) wrong.

We have been creating games and suffering because of it since 2011.

What we did right

1) We put everything on the line, achieving high quality

Mouth: Shadow Tactics was released on December 6, 2016, the day before the German Developer Awards, where we won awards in as many as four categories, including "Best German Game" and " Best studio" Around the same time, the first reviews began to appear. The scores and verdicts exceeded our wildest expectations: 86 rating from GameStar, 92 points from PC Gamer, even Rock Paper Shotgun and Kotaku praised us. Streamers and let's players have recorded hundreds of hours of gameplay. We sold over 60,000 copies that month alone, which was double our highest estimate. We currently have 98% positive reviews on Steam, which feels surreal to us.

The entire team, including interns and freelancers, at the German Developer Award 2016.

A year earlier, in December 2015, we could not have predicted such a result. The development process lasted only twelve months and we only got to the release of the alpha version. In parallel with the creation of all content, we were constantly working on the “vertical slice” of the game - the level that would later become the fifth mission - “Killing Mr. Yabu”; it was always as polished as possible and served as a quality bar for the rest of the game.

After releasing the alpha version, we realized that the "vertical slice" was actually much more beautiful than we had imagined the game at the very beginning - and therefore would take much longer to create. We learned a lot in these first twelve months: about development tools, about the game itself, and how to make the graphics create the best experience.

In-studio gameplay recording, initial pitch to the publisher

In-studio gameplay recording, “vertical slice” after 21 months of development

We realized that it is impossible to return to the pitch schedule, but new level The quality of the entire game obviously didn't fit into our original schedule. At this stage, we began to invest all the company's financial reserves into the project in order to extend the production period by another three months. Our publisher Daedalic Entertainment was able to extend the deadline, allowed us to cancel all planned DLC levels and funded another, fourth month. It is worth noting in parentheses that Daedalic's experience as a quality developer (for example, the Deponia series) helped us a lot in this situation, because they had already encountered the same problems many times. The schedule change not only meant better graphics, but also made each level much more dynamic.

At that time, we decided to finish the game in the best possible way - by reaching an agreement both within the team and with Daedalic itself. I told the team very clearly that we had to “put it all on the line.” If unsuccessful, it will be a Game Over for Mimimi. But for us there was no other choice, we were controlled by our passion and love. While our contributions paid off admirably, including the highest Metacritic score for a German game since 2011's Crysis 2, the work was a burden on the entire team and something we certainly don't want to experience again. As you might guess, we will talk about this in more detail in the section “What We Did Wrong.”

2) Revived a dead genre

Abe: Creating a remake of everyone's favorite game is the dream of every developer. In 2008, when I started studying game design, I talked to Moritz Wagner (now the lead game designer at Mimimi) about how Commandos is one of my favorite gaming franchises (another is Little Big Adventure; if so, I'm ready to take it on). Moritz was making great rap videos at the time where he dressed up as a ninja, so the image in my mind was of ninja style gameplay Commandos. I told Moritz about this and we laughed: “Ha, one day, when we become important and successful, we will be able to create such a game.” But it turned out that this was not a joke. In 2014, we talked about the idea " Commandos with ninjas" at Daedalic and soon signed a contract to publish the game. Now we have a real chance to revive the real-time tactics genre that was considered dead.

I want to explain why I think we were successful:

I'm a big fan of the genre. As a fan and designer, I craved the spiritual successor to those games: the feeling of being in a strangely realistic place, breathing with life; sneak among countless enemies and "take down" them, one by one, creating the most cunning plans, making risky moves and sometimes relying on pure luck and reflexes. I had a lot of confidence in my ability to create a game that fans would love, and often during production I had an instinctive sense of what would work for the game. Of course, this does not mean that I was always right. Communicating these feelings to other team members and implementing them into game design choices was often a complex and time-consuming process. But overall, knowing how the game should feel based on its spiritual predecessors helped us a lot. It was much easier than making something from scratch. It is also worth noting that Daedalic, although it gave us regular feedback, never had any creative control over our playing - we were actually free to pursue our desires.

But enough talking about feelings; let's take a look at the analytical side of things. During the pre-production stage, we analyzed the evolution of the genre and looked for concepts that remain unique today. We often compared the first game in the series with its own sequel Commandos 2: Men of Courage, the genre's most critically acclaimed entry.

2001 Pyro Studios game Commandos 2: Men of Courage

Both parts are stealth-oriented real-time tactical games set in the backdrop of World War II. You control a group of soldiers, highly specialized specialists, carrying out sabotage missions on enemy territory. Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines introduced us to a team of player-controlled characters with highly developed skill sets that depend on each other and force the player to combine their unique skills. The game is somewhat similar to chess - you have a very limited set of actions and strict rules, but they provide endless possibilities. IN Commandos 2 there was a more realistic and open approach, giving the player much more skills and opportunities. The game eliminated artificial restrictions (for example, in the first part, only one character could use a specific type of weapon) and added new features (collecting enemy equipment, etc.). So, since judging by the reviews of the players and the press Commandos 2 turned out to be better, it seemed obvious that it was worth choosing it as the main source of inspiration for creating a spiritual successor. But we didn't do this.

It seemed to us that Commandos 2"diluted" the uniqueness of the series created in the first part, turning it from a chess-like game into a more realistic simulation with added structural complexity. For example, by adding more possible actions, the developers made the game more difficult to master. We didn't want to create more gameplay depth this way. Therefore, we decided on the first pillar of game design - "Creating depth without adding structural complexity" - which we strived to adhere to in all aspects of game design. The "realistic" approach chosen Commandos 2, also made all player characters a little too powerful, which hurt the unique aspect team game, created earlier - limiting realism for the sake of balancing gameplay.

Let's look at an example that allowed players to dishonestly exploit the systems introduced in the second part: a diver in Commandos 2 had a very powerful knife throwing skill, which is balanced by the need to pick up the knife after throwing. The Green Beret also had a knife, but he could not throw it. Due to the added inventory system, the player could give the Green Beret's knife to a diver, turning him into a powerful killing machine armed with two knives, while the normally powerful Green Beret was demoted in capabilities to a bystander.

IN Shadow Tactics We again focused on a limited, hard-coded skill set for each character with no transferability, and designed the game so that each character's skill was strong when combined with the skills of other team members, but remained effective on its own. Ultimately, by focusing on the first game in the genre and transforming it in a direction that was different from its successors, we were able to revive the genre in a way that feels unique and fresh today.

3) Creating a new brand in an old genre

Abe: reviving a “dead” genre often involves remaking an existing brand. For example, this was the case with XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which brought the turn-based tactics genre back to the world on a AAA scale. Having neither the funds, nor the capabilities, nor the copyright in the real-time tactical stealth genre, we were forced to invent our own brand. This had its risks: fans might not like it a new game due to the lack of important elements their favorite projects - setting, characters, artistic style, maybe just a big name, the mention of which makes them feel good. We needed to invent something new on all counts.

As for the setting, we took a risk and dramatically changed the scenery, moving the game to Japan during the Edo period. We were confident in this decision because we felt how critical it was for players to match the environment and gameplay to ensure they never felt unnatural. The image of a stealthy ninja quietly destroying an entire army can be considered even more convincing than the image of a WWII soldier, who is more easily associated with loud gunfire. The stereotype of the stealthy ninja is so strong that we were confident from the beginning that he would be perfect for the genre.

Choosing an artistic style Shadow Tactics We also matched the new environment because we used Japanese ink paintings as a source of inspiration. This allowed us to create a unique image that is instantly recognizable in any screenshot. This is what we aimed to achieve when developing a new style, which was easier to achieve with stylized rather than photorealistic graphics. To what extent this was the right decision for the genre, we will discuss below, in the section “What We Did Wrong: Style vs. Genre.”

But if everything is so tied to the new surroundings and ninjas, then why should the game be called Shadow Tactics with just a little reference in the subtitle Blades of the Shogun- we didn’t even have the word “Ninja” in the name? The point was that Daedalic and I wanted to think more broadly and create a brand that could be used in more than just one setting. Nowadays, this strategy is very common - remember Assassin's Creed, Total War etc. For a small studio, such a move is quite risky, because it often means that the name of the game will be too vague. But we loved the idea of ​​exploring different environments, and now we have a brand that allows us to do that. So even if we fail to create Shadow Tactics: Legions of Rome, then we simply have one less problem.

4) Transferring the genre to consoles

Abe: From the very beginning, an important part of our plan was to bring the genre to consoles. Made an attempt before us Commandos 2, more or less successfully directly porting mouse and keyboard controls. We were fairly confident that we could deliver a better gaming experience on modern consoles, but from a design perspective the biggest challenge was correct setting control from a gamepad. Another major issue was the performance of the consoles.

From the very beginning, we were clear that we wanted to develop controls for PC and consoles in parallel, to make it equally good on both platforms. At the same time, it has always been clear that our main platform, PC, should never be allowed to suffer from potential gamepad control limitations. As the design and implementation progressed, it became increasingly clear to us that testing the capabilities regarding gamepad controls helped us identify the necessary parts of the mechanics and make them easier to use.

Example: After killing an enemy, the player most often must pick up the corpse to hide it. In our first design, killing and picking up a body required two different user actions. But when prototyping this feature for a gamepad, we realized that these commands should be executed in one action - long press to kill and then pick up the body. Of course, we implemented this feature for mouse and keyboard controls as well - to do the same thing. You can hold down the Ctrl key (raise and interact key).

Regarding the technical aspects of the console version, our biggest fears were issues with frame rate and quick save/load times. Shadow Tactics was our first console project, so we had almost no experience with consoles. In addition, the Unity 3D game engine did not have the best reputation on consoles at that time. But since we've been working with Unity for the last seven years, there's no way we could lose our skills by moving to an engine with a better reputation on consoles. For some time we developed versions for PC and consoles in parallel, and constantly checked whether it was possible to achieve at least acceptable performance on consoles. However, at a certain stage we decided to release the versions not at the same time, because we needed all the resources to release the PC version.

After completing the golden master on PC, we immediately went back to the console version and started testing builds again - with terrible results. Some levels reached a constant 15 fps in areas in which the player had to spend approximately 30 minutes; for example, this was the case in the starting area “Matsuyama City”. With the time of “quick” saving/loading, everything was also bad, saving took up to 10 seconds, and loading took 50-60 seconds. The goal was clear: we needed to at least double the frame rate, speed up saving by about 5 times, and loading by about 20 times, all without compromising the quality of the graphics. A typical “kill me” moment in the life of a game developer.

Matsuyama City level: one of the worst speed stages on consoles)

We've improved save/load times by pre-generating serialization code in code files and running-time caching of everything possible. Loading was still not fast enough because recreating GameObjects and adding their components on the Unity side took about 15 seconds. As a result, we were able to get around this problem by dynamically creating GameObject templates that contained all the necessary components and cloning them. The final results even surprised me a little: in the worst case, saving now took 1-2 seconds, and loading - 3 seconds.

To optimize the overall frame rate, we took two important steps. First, we independently grouped the models into large tiles that roughly fit the screen size in our camera's perspective to reduce the number of draw calls and clipping operations. Secondly, we made the scene hierarchy flatter, which is very important for moving objects, in order to avoid multiple matrix calculations. Having made a thousand other optimizations, we achieved a stable 30 fps on PS4 and XBox One. In addition, William Armstrong and John Elliott from Spotlight Team Unity helped us a lot with the console version and creating custom builds of Unity, allowing us to achieve the goals set by the team. Many thanks to them!

By rewriting and optimizing our portion of the code so that the engine had to do as little work as possible, we were able to improve overall performance. We learned an important lesson - only you yourself know how your game works and what you need. Commercial engines like Unity do a lot more work because they are not designed for any specific game or genre, so optimizing the load on the engine is your job.

The report at Unite Europe 2017 by our technical director Frieder Melke and gameplay programmer Philipp Wittershagen talked about this in more detail.

As a result, we achieved success and developed Unity game, who worked with high speed on Xbox One and PS4, without sacrificing graphics quality. Therefore, we are very happy and satisfied with the console versions, which received the same high ratings as the PC version.

5) Marketing the game, trying to reach hardcore fans

Mouth: Unlike our previous game The Last Tinker, we knew exactly what the target audience should be Shadow Tactics. The game had to be challenging from the very beginning and attract true fans of the genre. However, marketing Shadow Tactics still turned out to be quite difficult, because during the production process we encountered three serious problems:

1. Trying to reach hardcore fans: those who loved the old games in the genre are now much older, harder to reach, and may not play games at all anymore.
2. Trying to reach a new audience: Reviving a dead and forgotten genre meant that young players knew nothing about it at all. Additionally, Commandos and Desperados sold exceptionally well in Europe, but many gamers in the US (one of the most important markets) had never heard of them.
3. “Selling” the visual component: taking into account the constant camera perspective and real time gameplay It was very difficult to create a sense of cinematography in trailers or gameplay videos. Games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown And Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle took great steps in the right direction to overcome the limitations of its genre (active camera angles, multiple cutscenes), but after thinking about similar concepts in our real-time gameplay, we realized that it wouldn't work or would even be distracting to players. Additionally, we were a much smaller team with a very limited budget, so the clarity of the graphics was only adequate in a normal camera perspective.

We have made a lot of efforts to solve all these problems. We think the following worked:

While attending events like PAX and gamescom, we often received feedback from newcomers to the genre that our game was "isometric" Metal Gear Solid " or "hardcore Assassin's Creed with several characters." This was an oversimplification, but we knew we would never be able to compete with these games or reach their audience. On the other hand, we also quickly realized that almost all gamers who gave Shadow Tactics chance, even despite the initial shyness, quickly fell in love with the game. This happened all the time at these events, so we felt a huge difference compared to our previous projects.

This convinced our director of communications, Dennis Husak, to insist on releasing a demo: the game had to sell itself. We had to trust the quality we achieved and let people try it for themselves. No trailer would be able to have the same impact, so we decided to go this route and made the free demo the basis of the advertising campaign.

“Play the demo!” was our main motto even after the game's release.

We released the demo on November 21, 2016. Thanks to this, the number of “wishlists” with our game quickly increased from 15 thousand to 40 thousand, just two weeks before release. For reference: the first 15 thousand wishes were collected in almost seven months. The day before release, the game was already on 150 thousand lists, and a year later - on about 700 thousand. We didn't run any kind of pre-order campaign, so we felt that all the pre-release wishlists were much more valuable - that is, it was a signal of "I'll buy it right after release" rather than "I'll wait until the discounts start." We've sold over 400K copies on desktop platforms and the demo has been downloaded over 160K times.

Suddenly the game's community became much more vibrant. Our AMA on Reddit was a huge success, and even the Live Stream on Facebook attracted approximately 31 thousand users according to FB statistics, so it was all worth the effort. Releasing a demo was the best way to solve all three problems, and the community really liked it that we released it in 2016. Moreover, every time someone asked about the gameplay, someone from the community always advised to just download the demo we posted. We publicly stated that we need everyone's support in spreading information about our unknown game. Thus, it was thanks to our very first fans that we managed to reach many players of the original Commandos.

For the record, the decision to release the demo was not an easy step. Dennis had to sell us all on the idea because I was afraid that players would only be content with one level and then move on to the next $10 AAA game. Experience gaming industry told us that releasing a demo would hurt sales, so it was actually a big leap of faith for us.

What we did wrong

1) They put everything on the line, almost becoming bankrupt

Mouth: As stated earlier, release Shadow Tactics became the fulfillment of our dream: we created successful game with grades you never even dreamed of.

However, shortly before the game's release, we canceled two subsequent projects, were almost on the verge of bankruptcy, and half the team, including our longest-serving employees, had already been laid off - we were saving money to release console version the smallest possible team.

Although a success story where everything is on the line sounds romantic in some ways, it was actually a terrible experience. And we should have seen it coming: by adding four more months to the project schedule, we were able to make the game much better, but we had exhausted all our savings. When we realized that our backup plans for new projects weren't working as planned, we knew everything was going to hell. We are fully invested in Shadow Tactics, so we didn’t prepare new pitches, and we had nothing to offer new partners. They also, of course, waited several weeks for the release of the game and SteamSpy data before deciding to sign the project.

This put us in a terrible position: the team was standing on stage in front of the entire German games industry, happy and at the same time aware that this could be the last month of the studio's life.

Partially due to luck, partially due to the release of a decent game, we were able to talk to the publishers after release and none of them decided to take advantage of the situation and did not try to force us into a bad deal. Negotiations that usually take months were carried out quickly and fairly. As a result, to our surprise, we had to choose one of the projects, any of which we would happily take on. I clearly remember being on the train on December 23rd, just the day before Christmas, and writing last letter team, informing them that the contract has been signed and we are safe for some time.

Mimimi after getting rid of all the heavy paperwork.

When we returned to work in early January, we ritually destroyed all papers that were in any way connected with the potential death of our studio. It sounds fun, but I’ll say for myself: this whole situation hung like a heavy burden on me for the next six months. Even when we returned to normal life, I experienced stress and sleep problems that took several weeks to realize.

Mimimi has always been something of a "safe harbor", a company that has never laid off anyone due to fund cuts. We always had a budget in our account for at least the next three months. This was the first time we felt so unstable, and we knew about it for months. Changing the workload without increasing the budget from a reliable source was a risky and bad decision because the chaos that befell us was much worse than expected. I consider it my personal mistake that I did not secure subsequent projects with special contract terms. I usually do this, but for personal reasons and because of trust in people, this was not done at that time.

2) Lack of resources to develop new content

Mouth: As mentioned above, during production we had to cancel all of our planned DLC levels in order to fully focus on the main game, which was the right decision for the original release. But we are a small team, so when we signed an agreement on a new project, we had no resources left to work on the current one. Things like releasing patches or adding new languages ​​have already become a huge burden. Although many fans asked additional content and we would have loved to release it, we just didn’t have the opportunity.

There were two serious reasons for this:

1. Implementation is incredibly expensive. The game has 13 different languages ​​and fully voiced dialogue in Japanese and English. We would have to translate the DLC into all these languages ​​and invest a lot of money to use the same people for the voice acting. Another investment would be testing and performing full quality control (this genre is difficult to test due to the sandbox-like level structure). Although Shadow Tactics generated income, we were not even sure whether we would be able to recoup the investment at all.
2. Our players and members of the Mimimi team would expect the DLC to be at the same level of quality as the main game. This would mean that our most experienced employees would have to participate in the development, instead of, say, outsourcing it or hiring new staff. But everyone was already working on a new project, from which much more was expected, and we are not fans of crunch, and cloning devices had not yet been invented. Therefore, in order to ensure that our new game does not disappoint anyone, we had to focus on one big task.

Although the financial aspect played a role, the most important obstacle was the lack of free time. We would never decide to release mediocre DLC just to make money. We probably should have released the DLC immediately after release, but hindsight is always easier than predictions, and at that moment it just didn't happen.

3) Violation of the unspoken rules of consoles

Abe: A port of the classic PC genre with mouse and keyboard control - truly difficult task which some people managed to solve great games type Diablo 3 And XCOM: Enemy Unknown. When designing the controller control scheme, we tried to take into account the habits of console players as much as possible, because we did not want to overwhelm them with a new genre and new controls. However, this is not entirely possible because some systems, such as free-motion, rotation and zoom cameras, are rare on consoles and there are no standards for controller control. In the end we came up with this control scheme on PS4:

Shadow Tactics control layout on PS4.

There are also “natural” conventions, such as a “square” for killing and a “cross” for jumping; There are other common controls, such as the side buttons L1 for the skill wheel and L2 for aiming. There's also pressing the right R2 trigger to activate a special camera mode, which is completely unfamiliar to players because this button is usually used for shooting, speeding up, or other important gameplay actions.

So why did we choose a trigger? Because we needed a button that, when pressed, would allow us to control the stick. Consequently, the only options were the side buttons; besides, all the other buttons were occupied by more familiar actions. This was obviously contrary to the expectations of console gamers, and was perhaps made even more so by the fact that the rest of the control scheme followed "console rules". On the other hand, we're still not sure whether it was worthwhile to tie such a complex new feature as camera control to a button that players are used to performing other actions. On the other hand, we believe that this was the right decision because it will make the player more aware of the presence of this feature.

However, other problems were obvious: we missed the opportunity to talk more about the camera control capabilities in the tutorial, creating it in the same space as for the PC version. In most cases this was quite normal; Perhaps this was the reason for our mistake - we lost sight of the fact that large parts of the tutorial should be different depending on the control and the target audience. We only changed the displayed text and images, but we also needed to change some parts of the tutorial structure.

Additionally, we did not perform a detailed gaming test for console-only users. Players who are used to playing on both PC and consoles may have completely different expectations compared to players who play exclusively on consoles. Perhaps the fact that most PC players were pleasantly surprised by the ability to fully play with a controller prevented us from collecting more detailed feedback.

In the end, nothing terrible happened and the console audience reacted favorably to us because it was something new and players did not have examples of other games that solved the same problems in much better ways. But we still think there are many ways to continue fine tuning games, especially regarding controls.

4) Style versus genre

Abe: As I said before, we always strive to create a unique graphical style in our games that makes them instantly recognizable and memorable. For Shadow Tactics We initially took inspiration from traditional Japanese ink paintings and tried to create our own style by combining them with comic book style elements and canvas-like materials. This style turned out to be amazing and seemed to fit well with our art team who had already created unique graphics The Last Tinker in papier-mâché style.

After showing off our first graphical prototypes, we received a lot of feedback that the game was too similar to a mobile game. We were developing a game for PC/consoles, so of course it didn't suit us, but at the same time it was quite ironic because in the first pitch Shadow Tactics was supposed to be released on mobile, and some of the graphic ideas were preserved. As a result, they initially influenced the graphical style of the PC/console version.

Our first graphic prototype, 2014

We agreed with the feedback and began developing a less abstract style that we felt needed a richer, more detailed world. The process of developing the final style was unexpectedly long, and then led to a longer production phase.

When we discussed the choice of setting, it was very important to us to perfectly match the real-time tactics genre, but we did not consider the art style as carefully. If you look at other tactical/strategy games, most use a photorealistic style, including older games Commandos And Desperados. Today we're guessing that our stylized graphics instantly turned off many hardcore tactics fans who didn't even get a chance to take a closer look at Shadow Tactics. We only received a few comments about the graphics being too comic book-like, but we never realized how important that was. We also missed the chance to do AB testing early in production to determine a style that would appeal to most real-time tactics fans.

On a more personal level of choice and taste, we're quite happy with the resulting graphics and have heard a lot positive feedback. And there was really no attempt to create a realistic style good option for our team because it did not suit the team's taste and was difficult to achieve with the efforts of a small team.

5) Game marketing: still failed to reach hardcore fans

Mouth: Despite a fairly successful release, it was still difficult for us to reach people - even with all these great reviews and media attention. Here's what we ended up with that didn't work out as planned:

A few weeks after the game's release, someone from Germany visited our studio and told me that we had released an amazing game, but he only heard about it two weeks before release and our marketing was very bad. I replied: “We were featured several times in all German gaming media, both digital and paper, from the moment we announced the start of development until the release. We were on some of the biggest channels of German let's players and streamers. Even the foreign press, like Rock Paper Shotgun and Kotaku, talked about us.”

But that person did not use any of the mentioned channels, despite the fact that he was a gamer and part of our target audience. We didn't really know how to reach him other than appearing on his favorite channels, which were too exotic and we couldn't afford to put up posters at bus stops. When we showed the game at events after release, we had the same problem: we thought we were reaching the audience well, but many potential buyers had never even heard of our game.

And although the demo helped us a lot, many gamers did not know about its existence. We found a lot of people on Steam who weren't even aware of the download option, perhaps due to the odd placement of the button outside of the game's purchase area. There are still players who are waiting for a serious discount to test the game on their machines, not realizing that a demo is just one click away from them. On PlayStation 4, our game is not even shown in the demo category, because we decided to publish a trial version instead. It's essentially the same as the PC demo, but allows you to unlock the full version inside running game without downloading a new application. It's very user friendly and doesn't pose any problems, but it gave us a bad position in the store.

Faced with the situation of “how do we sell the game by presenting it in a cinematic, compelling way,” we tried very hard to show something that explained the genre to newcomers. Our preview trailer aimed to create a cinematic approach based on the game's actual visuals, but people complained about the animations and graphics.

In the release trailer, we tried to go the route of pre-rendered graphics to attract a larger audience, but in the end we were unsuccessful. The second, pre-rendered and more stylized trailer for the game's console release suffered the same fate, and even worse. Moreover, compared to the development budget, this was a very significant investment. If you watched the video, you immediately realized that six months after release we didn't actually have a trailer with actual gameplay. It was released shortly before the console release because no one had the resources to do it before. We thought the first trailer was our chance to really talk about how Shadow Tactics works and plays. In hindsight, I think we should have focused on the gameplay trailer first and just accepted the fact that the game engine wasn't going to make a blockbuster trailer. To make a splash, pre-rendered trailers need to be very large and expensive, or it takes an incredibly smart yet inexpensive idea to make the trailer go viral.

Summarize

There are probably hundreds of thousands more people in the world who could enjoy our game, but they simply don't know about its existence. And, frankly, we don’t know how to reach them. Those players who are hesitant may be put off by the graphical style, the title, or the fact that we lost a lot of time before the release on consoles, or maybe we won’t even be able to grasp the reason for this.

On the other hand, most players Shadow Tactics very happy with the game on all platforms. And all interested parties made money, and this is important, because this is how we proved that the genre is profitable. Not only is it worth reviving, but it will allow us to create more in this genre! And we are very happy about this.

Given the game's success, it's hard to say whether it was the right decision to invest all that money and resources, risking everything. We can only say that we do not want to repeat this and will try to find another solution, of course, making sure that the game does not suffer. Add tags

This is the one a pleasant surprise when a game from a little-known studio suddenly turns out to be almost an heiress cult series.

The fact that it could potentially become a spiritual continuation of Commandos became clear much earlier: at the end of November, a demo version appeared in which you could try the gameplay and evaluate the colorful, but not at all cartoonish, graphics.

But if at first there were doubts whether Mimimi Productions would meet such a standard for the entire game, then you can safely forget about them. They pulled!

Game process

Tactical games that would really force you to think and act according to a plan worked out to the smallest detail are hard to find these days. Moreover, when the development is in charge of a team that has previously created only one game, and even then a cartoon adventure for a primary school audience.

Realizing this makes it even more enjoyable to start playing through Blades of the Shogun, because its gameplay is the Commandos classic come to life with some differences, mainly related to the game setting in Japan of the late shogunate (1615).

The player must conduct secret sabotage attacks on enemy territory, having at hand an extremely limited human resource - only 5 fighters. All of them are professionals in their field, however, according to the laws of the genre, there are no universal soldiers in the game.

For example, the ninja-shinobi Hayato is great at dealing with single targets, jumping across rooftops and throwing shurikens, but can do little against groups of fighters. Samurai Mugen, on the contrary, is deprived of many tactical capabilities, but he can special problems cope with several enemies of the new shogun at once.

Each hero is unique in some way and has its own gameplay scheme. However, this is only the beginning of the advantages of the game, because levels play an equally important role. They are the ones who force the player to constantly think and plan the next step.

In this sense, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun has a lot in common with puzzle games like Hitman GO: in order to progress further, you need to solve the correct sequence of actions that the level designer came up with. This algorithm is unique for each level, and therefore it is impossible to come up with a universal recipe for passing: the game constantly throws up new situations and unusual tactical conditions.

It is also impossible not to mention the special planning mode, which will often help the player out when constructing multi-move schemes. It works like this: we give orders to different fighters, and then give the go-ahead, after which these orders are carried out.

Dialogues and plot

The game from Mimimi Productions has a storyline that tells about a difficult period for the land of the rising sun. Not everyone accepted the new ruler, and therefore they have to fight long and tedious wars with the conspirators.

The story of a motley squad in this historical setting is incredibly appropriate, because in Japan at that time there was so much mix - armored samurai, exotic ninjas, sharpshooters and snipers that sometimes your head is spinning.

However, you shouldn’t expect anything special from the game’s plot: this is not the most important thing in the game. The characters are given specific goals, and therefore their dialogues, businesslike and restrained, concern only them. Japanese brevity and meekness, nothing less!

Blades of the Shogun graphics

If you want to know how successful the graphics in a game about Japan are, ask the Japanese himself. This principle does not work with all countries, but in the case of the land of the rising sun it is more than appropriate.

The Japanese resource Kotaku admires the Shadow Tactics picture, calling it a toy diorama come to life. Indeed, the graphics are very stylish, rich, atmospheric. All locations are created with incredible love and care, almost each has its own unique color scheme and set of effects.

In addition to this, they can also be rotated, examined from different angles, revealing their real three-dimensionality! A fairy tale, just a fairy tale!

Music and sound

Without exception, all aspects of the game are executed efficiently and without significant problems, and the sound design is no exception.

The music of Blades of the Shogun is mainly represented by traditional Japanese motifs. Obviously, they will not appeal to those who cannot stand the “Japanese”, but for lovers of Asian culture they are simply a treasure.

However, there is not enough music in the game: it can be repeated periodically, and towards the end of the game you want to turn it down so that it does not distract from the complex gameplay.

It’s interesting that even though the project is clearly a budget project, the developers did not skimp on voicing all the dialogues, and in two languages ​​at once - in English and, yes, in Japanese.

Great tactics in Japanese settings

It seems that Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is ideal: each of its components is made at a high level and can easily compete even with “large” projects of this and related genres.

But if you look closely, you can understand that after completing the game completely, the game suddenly loses interest, and all because it is created on the principle of a one-time puzzle: almost all levels are using a complex algorithm that is interesting to solve, but boring to repeat again.

Thus, the only significant disadvantage of the game is the lack of replayability. Otherwise, it succeeds and fully pays for its price.

Daedalic Entertainment and Mimimi Productions brought back not even 2007, but 1998. According to the laws of that time, it will be painful and difficult for players, but cool.

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Oldfag gamers, as befits old people in absolutely any field, love to groan about the glorious past and the soulless present. They say that before the elves were rounder and the games were angrier. Often their preferences remain unanswered, but sometimes in the current gaming industry there are echoes of the notorious “glorious past.” In the role-playing genre it became a duology, and in the stealth direction - whose action takes place in Japan in the 17th century. The Land of the Rising Sun is being torn apart a little Civil War, sake flows in rivers mixed with blood, a geisha goes against a samurai - in general, a cultural recreation of those times.

Smelling of mothballs, it literally screams of gameplay kinship with the legendary and less glorious, but overall not bad. Being a specific hybrid of strategy with the stealth genre, it actively rattles the player’s nerves, while at the same time paying tribute to the above-mentioned games with almost all of its elements.

Let's say one of the five heroes, represented by squad shooter Takuma, uses a sniper mode, practically indistinguishable from that of a sniper from. The heroes, in principle, breathe “freshness” from our turbulent tactical youth, not only with clear roles and skills, but also with the concept of “Heels of dashing heroes against everyone.” Yes, including the ingloriousness of direct confrontation with a crowd of enemies. The title of the game subtly hints that even the mighty Mugen, slicing up enemies with the efficiency of a sausage shop, cannot cope with roleplaying in the style of Rambaud. Like it or not, everyone will have to pretend to be a rag.

But not everyone will receive enough attention. The irony is that for all the versatility of the characters and the wealth of possible tactics, there are few situations where the entire squad is needed at once. Given specializations that do not even involve a step aside from the assigned role, the gamer will most often see Hayato - a ninja so classic that his eyes will begin to narrow on their own. Behind best friend Mugen goes on guard for a stabbing in the gateways and Aiko, with her charms luring very smart enemies to less safe places, where it is so pleasant to poke them with sharp katanas. Takuma and Yuki, to put it mildly, are superfluous at this celebration of life. Their capabilities should have been distributed, rather than chasing comparisons and the intensity of passions.

A squad of brave warriors and warriors simply do not follow the gaming decrees from above. Each of them pursues their own goals, which serves as a source of internal strife. From this position, five heroes are better than three, since there is much more space for writers. However, the gameplay developers failed to justify Takuma and Yuki, and the plot is far from ideal.

However, Daedalic Entertainment And Mimimi Productions(don't laugh: everything is serious) made the right calculation for the public. It’s not at all designed for the mass player, but it will certainly make Japanese fans fall in love with it because of its beautiful design and connoisseurs tactical games of the past due to gameplay similarities and the banal lack of modern competitors. The uselessness of Takuma and Yuki looks like a mere trifle against the backdrop of exciting episodes that require the player to be seasoned.

A beginner will howl from the shameless cruelty of the local stealth, but an expert will be shocked: it is very demanding of the player’s tactical skills, patience and attentiveness. Miscalculations on the highest difficulty are quickly punished with steel in the liver and no F5/F9. Died? Start the level from the beginning. The game hits you with a sledgehammer on your pride and nerves, which is what makes it so valuable.

The project has a lot of shortcomings, but their criticality depends on perception. Loading times are too long, and sometimes situations arise that can only be resolved by certain combinations of characters, so you still have to figure out what else to do. No, such tricks are not justified logically. The main thing is that Daedalic Entertainment did not bother with even minor innovations, so the game is completely secondary. In conditions of genre hunger, it may not be important, but it’s 2016 and sneaking in gameplay from the 2000s is an idea bordering on madness. However, such madness has its own charm for those who missed it, and they themselves were driven into the grave after a double-digit number of playthroughs. Katana in the teeth, shuriken in the hands and forward - to the liberation of Japan!

Shadow Tactics came out as a very niche game, but in its class few can compete with it. Although copied from Commandos, it gives players a lot of interesting tactical situations and opportunities to resolve them. Visually, of course, it doesn’t blow your mind, but it’s pleasing to the eye, and Japanophiles will enthusiastically wave their cherry branches.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun- a game of a unique genre. Essentially, this is “real-time tactics” - the same as Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines and its continuation, as well as Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive. This genre is unique because all the games mentioned are the brightest, but almost the only representatives of it.

Blades of the Shogun coped with its main task masterfully: it reminded us of games in which a small squad of experienced warriors carries out dangerous tasks in secret from the enemy. However, the new product should be appreciated not only for this. Among other things, Shadow Tactics is a project that I don’t want to criticize at all.

Crouching Tiger

Japan, Edo period. The country is ruled by the powerful Tokugawa clan. The economy is developing rapidly, the population is growing, medieval civil strife is disappearing, and the “golden” age of Japanese literature is approaching.

During this wonderful time, the events of Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun take place. It is clear that the employees Mimimi Productions they love and respect the history of Japan - this is reflected in the attention to detail. The language in the dialogues, the topics for chatter of the guards, the design of weapons, the architecture - everything corresponds to the era.

The locations are even more delightful. Down with the boring military bases from World War II and the prairies of the Wild West! Welcome to rice fields, into bamboo forests and to the foot of the mountain, on the top of which an impregnable fortress was built. The levels are really good, you want to explore them. Maybe this is not always necessary for passing, but believe me, your conscience will not allow you to bypass some majestic temple on a hill and calmly complete the mission.

In Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, it's easy to get caught up in the scenery and miss the hidden hole.

But you shouldn’t expect a serious plot from Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. The Edo period is rich in important historical events, but they are not related to the adventures of the main characters. The local history is by no means devoid of charm, and there was a place for unexpected twists in it, but with a pen and notepad in your hands, follow the development of the plot, as if watching some TV series HBO, you are unlikely to.

However, it is difficult to call the lack of strong story in a game like Shadow Tactics. The focus here is gameplay, and Blades of the Shogun has no problems with it.

Hidden Dragon

The heroes of Shadow Tactics are hired killers. And each has unique skills. So, the head of the squad, ninja Hayato, hides in the shadows and at the right moment strikes enemies with a katana and shuriken. Samurai Mugen in a tense fight can single-handedly defeat several opponents at once, but heavy armor will not allow him to climb onto the roof. Delightful Aiko distracts enemies dressed as a geisha, while agile Yuki creates traps. Another member of the squad, the elderly Takuma, is a sniper.

The main task in Blades of the Shogun is to correctly combine the characters' skills. If you carefully look around the level, come up with a suitable plan and implement it wisely, everything will go like clockwork - the “tactical” mechanism works like a clock.

All opponents have a field of view. The main thing for the heroes is not to get into the green sector.

The most difficult, clumsy and not worthy of a real ninja path is always in plain sight - you will notice it first. But there are a lot of ways to get to your cherished goal in Shadow Tactics, and scouring around in search of workarounds is a special pleasure. The local locations are real puzzles, and to solve them you need to use everything that is found on the level: for example, a secret hole or a bell that attracts the attention of enemies. Jumping from roof to roof is also in the order of things - after all, we are playing as ninjas and samurai.

Most often, locations in Shadow Tactics consist of several tiers. This significantly complicates the task - you also have to keep an eye on those opponents who are, for example, on the second floor.

But even with a well-thought-out plan, fooling your opponents is not easy. They keep an eye on each other and raise the alarm if one of their colleagues disappears from sight. They pay attention to the tracks, inspect the bushes (no joke!) and generally do everything to find a squad of hired killers. Don’t forget that there are many enemies: some are clever, some are strong, and there are also those with whom it’s better not to meet at all - “they’ll eat you.”

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To date, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is one of a kind. Even if it had enough shortcomings, we would still, albeit with reservations, recommend it to everyone who yearned for the series Commandos. However, in general there is nothing to criticize Blades of the Shogun for. Unpretentious setting, polished gameplay, colorful characters - a unique game!

Before we begin to review it directly, I would like to note that this game was developed by Mimimi Productions and published by Daedalic Entertainment. The product is a tactical stealth action game, and takes us to 17th century Japan with all its then-current features - samurai, ninjas, shoguns, etc.

Not a clone, but a follower

Already in the first hours of passage Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun It immediately becomes clear that in terms of mechanics the game is very similar to the series Commandos. But it’s not too early to blame the developers for plagiarism, since the more you immerse yourself in the gameplay, the more you realize that any similarities here are only genre, and do not have any obvious connection with other games. Plus, the setting of ancient Japan adds to everything Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun some individuality and freshness compared to other similar products.

For those new to the genre of tactical stealth action in real time, I would like to immediately note that in Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun There is quite competent and step-by-step training. We are not thrown straight into the loop, but are initially allowed to get used to the game mechanics, understand the rules of the gameplay and learn the basic concept of the game. You shouldn’t expect too easy passage from this product, since after the first mission the difficulty increases noticeably.

This also increases the demands on our tactical decision-making skills. In this game, we cannot kill everyone and everything at once and calmly move on to the next level - before each action we need to think several times, look at the map, remember the location of the soldiers, etc. Fortunately there is a lot in the game tactical elements, thanks to which the passage does not slide into a simple and uninteresting clicking on the same place, but allows you to really feel like a real tactician.

Variability suits her

We must not forget that Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun also includes a stealth component. It is necessary to kill enemies quietly, without attracting unnecessary attention. As a rule, we have several options for killing - you can lure out enemies one by one and cut their throats from behind, you can throw shuriken at them, or you can even bypass some enemies without wasting time on them.

An important element in Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is that we take control of not one hero, but several. Thus, as we progress, we form a whole squad consisting of secretive ninjas and formidable samurai. Each character usually has its own characteristics that must be used in certain situations. For example, sometimes in order to open a passage for one character, you need to select a second one, clear the location of enemies, and then just unlock the door and move on. In most cases, the characters must interact with each other.

Levels in Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun quite diverse, both in visual terms and in terms of thoughtfulness. Often we have not one, but several paths we can take. Some will be harder than others, but much shorter, while the long journey may be easy. Thus, we are constantly presented with choices that make the gameplay non-linear and very interesting.

Difficult, but wildly interesting

The developers did not forget to add to Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and a storyline that tells us about secret conspiracies during the Edo era. Each hero has his own story, motives and goals, which are revealed gradually. The characters are not some soulless dummies, but quite living heroes with their own thoughts and desires in their heads.

Sometimes they exchange various phrases among themselves, containing both something heroic and humor that complements general interest. In-game story Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun cannot be called something masterpiece, but thanks to the well-chosen setting and diversity in terms of characters, reading every dialogue and immersing yourself in the plot is very interesting.

Visually, the game is quite attractive and has good level design. Japanese cherry trees, houses with curved roofs, various forests and monasteries allow us to be transported to Japan and feel like one of the soldiers fighting for peace in our country. In addition to this, we can include Japanese voice acting, which significantly enhances the atmosphere and does not seem out of place in this harsh and cruel game world.