Bears, network play and the Norse shield wall

Bears

I’ve wanted bears for a while, it’s just really cool to see. “bears” gives you brown bears, “moonbears” black ones and “polar bears” the big white ones. “viking bears” are Norse, “romans riding bears” are people on bears, and “rats riding bears” is exactly what it sounds like.

“bears riding bears” works too. The first bears are the race and the second are the mount, but nothing can carry a bear, so they walk. Their cauldron on the walls pours boiling honey.

The placement checks had a lot to say about bears. Their heads sit higher and their backs are wider, and every helmet, cape and banner from every other race got tried on every bear. First run found 102 problems. All fixed in the data, no special cases.

Playing over the network

I wanted the quickest way to play against a friend, no servers and no accounts. Because the game has been built on commands from day one, the network part ended up pretty small. Each machine sends its commands for a turn, and the turn starts once everyone’s are in. Both machines keep checking they agree, so if anything drifts it shows up straight away.

There’s a Play on the network option in the lobby now, to host a game or join one on your network. I played my Mac against the Steam Deck.

I also wanted to load a saved two-against-two match on the network, with a friend taking over one of the computer players. That needed very little, and the test joined as the Jaguar Lords 26 minutes in.

Formations and the shield wall

Armies form up properly now. Foot soldiers in the middle, shooters behind, riders out on both wings. Units also go for something they’re good against before something slightly closer, so a spearman picks the rider.

Vikings used to just add horned helmets to whatever culture a race happened to get, and came out Greek more than once. Now the Norse have their own culture, with boardwalk streets, a longship crest, Berserkers, a Raven-Feeder hero and a shield wall where they stand shoulder to shoulder.

Name your hero

Heroes always come out the same for the same words, so I wondered if you should be able to pick one. Now you can, just by naming it. “sewer rats with a crown” gets you Ratty the 10000th of His Name. “roman widow” gets a note instead, because nobody called “widow” leads humans, so the Romans sent a tribune who yawns at elephants.

A river frogs can’t swim

I played a two-against-two on Reed Meadow and it was very one-sided too early on. Frogs swim, so the river didn’t stop them at all. It’s shallow, deep, shallow now, and nobody gets across the deep bit except at a ford or a bridge.