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GDC 2017: Brass Tactics Combines Real-Time Strategy With Oculus Touch

The studio behind popular strategy games Age of Empires II and Defense Grid 2 VR (Review: 8/10) have found success in the genre before, but now Hidden Path Entertainment is developing a brand new title for VR headsets. We went hands-on with the new game, Brass Tactics, at GDC 2017 and found a fun new approach to a classic genre in VR.

The core vision behind real-time strategy game Brass Tactics comes from Age of Empires 2 lead designer Mark Terrano, who is founder and chief creative officer at Hidden Path. The VR version of the studio’s earlier Defense Grid 2 converts the intricate battlefields of the traditional tower defense game into a highly detailed tabletop diorama that can be explored up close. It is immensely satisfying to see these kinds of rich and bustling miniature worlds floating in front of you. Games like Landfall (Review: 8/10) from Force Field continue to push these kinds of miniature-scale games forward in VR. Both those titles, however, are built for gamepads. While we rated each as being great, you can only do so much with that interaction approach in VR. This is where Brass Tactics comes in, which uses Oculus Touch controllers to let you control its clockwork mechanical units.

UploadVR Games Editor David Jagneaux and I initially commanded our armies from opposite ends of a very large battlefield spread across the surface of a table. The height of the table can be adjusted by pressing grip buttons on both controllers and raising or lowering them.

To move, all you need to do is press the grip button on one hand and pull. It took a minute to get acquainted with this approach of getting around but I found it very responsive and comfortable. In just one play session I was getting good at skimming across the surface of the map to move from spot to spot with a single tug.

And it may have been my speed that ultimately crushed David’s attempts to mount any sort of serious defense against me. You grab structures to place them on the battlefield so you can summon more troops and try to press onward.

At one point David and I encountered each other in the middle of the map and I felt a surge of adrenaline at the sudden realization he was micromanaging the same portion of the battle. I immediately rushed off to gather more troops and send them back to David’s location.

The game also offers a catapult feature in the corner of the map you can try to dial in and manually bombard a location. I found it more useful to manage my armies and direct them to key locations that David either wasn’t paying attention to or didn’t understand how to defend.

Brass Tactics from Hidden Path Entertainment is slated for release this fall with single player, player vs. player, and cooperative modes.

Tagged with: Age of Empires 2, brass tactics, defense grid 2, Hidden Path Entertainment, real-time strategy

At Oculus’ off-site GDC demo booth we saw Brass Tactics, Hidden Path Entertainment’s new real-time strategy game coming exclusively to Oculus Touch after their hit tower defense game Defense Grid 2 Enhanced VR Edition (2016). Filled with a bevy of miniature structures and multiple toy soldier units, the little tabletop world promises to deliver familiar RTS gameplay in a VR setting.

Putting on the headset, Brass Tactics immediately recalled a familiar design aesthetic, something that took me a second or two to recognize. The clockwork castle gyrating. The spinning brass gears. “Aha, it’s the opening to Game of Thrones,” I remarked aloud. “That’s exactly what we were going for,” responded studio founder and CCO Mark Terrano, also known for his role as lead designer on Age of Empires II (1999).

Getting a brief taste of the game, I was introduced to the basic units; archers, warriors, steampunk-ish legged tanks, flying units called ‘wasps’–all of them covering the classic roles found in RTSs. The full game will however feature multiple technology upgrades to choose from and 18 units (3 base units with 9 total upgrades) to keep things interesting.

Called ‘the keep’, your little clockwork home base starts you out with the basics, a warrior-producing building and an archer building. From there, you send your few minions out to capture the nearest node, where you can then choose from a number of structures displayed by turning your hand palm-up and looking at it like a wrist watch. These structures will not only produce the game’s all important offensive units, but also hold the node so ore-gathering miners can automatically spawn and start generating spendable coin for your next unit upgrade.

Although it at first felt a little overwhelming, my opponent wandered back to his corner of the board and started firing a manual catapult at some of my most forward units. Looking to my side, I saw one of my own. Aiming left or right, pulling back a few audible clicks and launching a flaming boulder can wipe out an entire group of lower class units like archers.

brass tactics 4 — image courtesy Hidden Path Entertainment

As a rule, you’re only as good at RTSs as you can pay attention to everything on the board and manage all of your units. The faster and more accurate, the better. Using Touch you can quickly move around the battlefield by grabbing and flinging yourself in any direction. Lowering or raising the table to your chosen level is the only other way to physically alter the board, as zooming in and out isn’t an option. I found this adequate for the size of the board, as it wasn’t too big to be unmanageable and necessitating a wider view. While it’s small enough for you to see everything on the board as it happens, the board is still big enough though to drive you crazy with all of the lanes that your opponent can exploit to capture ore-producing nodes.

brass tactics 5 — image courtesy Hidden Path Entertainment

Matches are 25 minutes long, although I was unplugged from my 1v1 battle prematurely. Besides 1v1 online battles, there will also be a 1 player campaign, and a ‘co-op versus AI’ mode available at launch in October 2017.

The post Hands-on: ‘Brass Tactics’ is a True Tabletop RTS with All the Classic Trimmings appeared first on Road to VR.