Frozen Synapse 2

http://www.frozensynapse2.com/

Open world tactics

Coming 2016

Uh… Open world?

I’ll be following this with great interest and anticipation. Glad they are moving away from fake sports and back to tactical combat. Frozen Synapse sits on a pedestal among other lesser games in my mind.

Wonder where they are going with the open world part but I have a lot of confidence in Mode 7 games.

-Todd

Unfortunately, I feel like Mode7 fumbled (pun intended) the execution of Frozen Cortex hard. Everything about it looked great on paper, but playing it was just dull and not engaging at all.

I hope they can return to the greatness of Frozen Synapse.

I agree. I also think Cortex was only ever going to penetrate a niche market. Most sports fans want to play rule-faithful sports games and most tactics fans prefer combat (I think?). I would imagine the fake sports (turn-based) audience is tiny and mostly dominated by Blood Bowl. I really didn’t see who the audience was for Cortex besides Synapse fans playing out of curiosity.

-Todd

I loved Frozen Synapse, can’t wait for this.

Worth noting (for those that missed Frozen Synapse) it is available for $1 (along with Frozen Cortex) in Humble’s current Weekly bundle. 1 day left.

-Todd

Frozen Synapse 2: Synapse harder
Frozen Synapse 2: Bloom++

Open world… I doubt it. But remember how small-pieced was Frozen Synapse, it was all very small scale tactics, for example a scenario could be 4 rooms and two corridors, compensating then with having lots of small scenarios instead of few big ones (and replayability and multi of course). This could be a bit bigger scale. Like, having an entire office complex including different floors instead of just four rooms.

Participating in the Frozen Endzone beta was just sad. They had a decent fledgling community that was organizing tourneys and offering pretty excellent feedback on the official forums. The developers tweeted all day, but only responded to their forums like every 2 months (each time it was an apology for not being more responsive).

They made promises to deliver crucial community features (uh… persistent chat ffs?), but instead delivered a bunch of other random stuff like a totally unnecessary stat system, a new name, and lots of new bugs. 8 months before release there were like 30 people looking for games at any time. Just before release there was no one.

I really feel like they shot themselves in the foot. To make matters worse their steam forum is policed by some troll that absolutely despises Mode 7 and tries to sign everyone up for his Frozen Synapse league.

In summary- Mode 7 needs a community manager.

That’s a shame Jason, I had no idea as I only played it when it left Early Access. It’s a shame that Mode 7 didn’t manage to get the multiplayer league stuff in there because that just seemed like a no-brainer given the nature of the game and, yeah, the community. I was also really disappointed with the tutorials and in-game help/documentation for Frozen Cortex. Chaos Reborn is the gold standard for me now for easing new players in.

That said, I loved Frozen Cortex and I don’t really follow any kind of sport. I honestly haven’t the foggiest how you play American football and even my knowledge of rugby is bare bones at best. All I needed to know about FC was that it was the next game from Mode 7 who brought us the sublime Frozen Synapse.

I’ve no idea why people get so hung up on the future sport theme; at the end of the day a good turn-based strategy game is a good turn-based strategy game (strategy/tactics, whatever), and Frozen Cortex was just that. A certain degree of ‘fiddly depth’ was lost in Cortex because it was a lot more streamlined than Synapse, but the underlying process of laying out a plan, tuning it, facing it off and weighing it up against other plans was still there and the sport angle just gave each game a very definite structure and momentum which I enjoyed. Just like in Synapse however, I never really played the single-player, though I’d still like to, especially the management mode. The multiplayer was dynamite in both games to me but Cortex went off the boil in the Qt3 async league thread so…

As for the Humble Strategy Bundle, it includes Frozen Synapse, Frozen Cortex and a few others, and if you pay over $15 you’ll get Big Pharma and Chaos Reborn too. That’s a really great deal if you ask me but hurry, there’s only 7 hours left now.

Back on topic: WEEEEEEEEE, FS2! WEEEEE!

Pre-alpha trailer

I have an uncontrollable Brian Rubin level of excitement for this!

And nervous_testpilot is doing the soundtrack!

-Todd

Hey, me too! ;-)

Damn, can’t watch it at work but eagerly await seeing it later when I’m at home!

nervous_testpilot ought to be doing the soundtrack - he’s the co-founder, co-owner and a designer at Mode 7! ;-)

By the way, if you sign up to their newsletter you get a free track from FS2. They did the same with Cortex and it just so happened to be my favourite piece of music from the game (Holding Fire, the club mix).

I’m still not convinced this game is going to work or needs to exist, but at least it’ll have a top-tier soundtrack.

Tom Francis writes about the a session of the “Failure Workshop” at GDC where Mode 7 talked about Frozen Cortex (not a commercial failure but a failure of reception, reaction, and concept). The fake sports theme doomed it.

Taylor showed the original trailer for Frozen Endzone, as it was originally called, to explain what they thought was the compelling concept. Its look is immediately different to Synapse—instead of abstract blueprint style, it’s a sports arena on top of a skyscraper, a gleaming metal city stretching off around it. And where Synapse involves small glowing men scuttling around far beneath you, Endzone switched to a cinematic camera to show close-ups of your angry sports robots enacting your plan with full, violent animation.

“It showed you making a plan, and that being interpreted into amazing animations.” Mode7 thought that was the core of the game, and that it would be “something that really excited people.”

The disparity between that and the actual public reaction became clear immediately: Taylor showed “some of the more polite comments” on YouTube, some of which do credit the new art style or the appeal of a Synapse-style planning system, but all of which ended with some variation of “too bad it’s just a sports game”.

“It’s still about handegg,” one comment concluded. “An unfortunate phrase I wasn’t familiar with, but which I’d be hearing a lot over the four years we worked on the game,” Taylor says.

-Todd

RPS dives into Frozen Synapse 2’s procedural cities and the way the factions work.

When the game begins, each faction will have control of an area of the city and they will perform a role within that zone. The catalyst for the events that kick off the strategic struggle is a series of incursions by a force as yet unknown. They might strike at an area controlled by the player or they might strike at an AI faction. Either way, their efforts will cause the shape of the city to change as they gain power and drive organisations to desperate survival measures.

The biggest change from the original game, in terms of the tactical combat, is in the early stages of each encounter. Rather than starting in media res, with combat the only option, you’ll have time to scout out the building and enemy patrol routes. The vehicle that your squad arrives in is customisable, which began as an aesthetic choice but became an important mechanic. Because you’ll be arriving at street level, with little cover in sight, the design of the vehicle will allow you to create cover for your squad, ensuring they’re not completely exposed.

Ohhhhhhh, me likey very muchey.

New development video is up! Goes into detail about the ability to move and shoot at the same time, a new counter mechanic to turtling, and streamlined wait orders. All in all, this is shaping up very nicely.

Dev updates 4 and 5 are up and cover the new ‘One Turns’ mode which looks… well, it looks like it could be my favourite mode. It’s genius and I’m really stoked for this now. New units include a minigunner (short and wide kill zone), flamethrower (long and narrow kill zone), toxin grenadier (area of effect that prevents movement) and smoke grenadier (breaks line of sight and prevents shooting through). The riot shielder is back from the FS: Red DLC too, which is great.

Oh and I hadn’t realised there’s updates 6 and 7 too, which deal with the X-Com Apocalypse-style single-player. Early doors yet but it looks way more expansive and exciting than the first game.