Summer’s hot Wargroove 2 news ⚔️

Hey Strategy Fans!

Wargroove 1.2.7 is here! Arriving with mod support, balancing updates and bug fixes, this update is a chunky one.

Balancing Updates

We noticed some Commanders were becoming too dominant due to how quickly their Tier 2 Grooves could be charged. To address this, we’re trying out some slower charge times for Emeric and Wulfar. Emeric now has a slow charge time, and Wulfar has been changed to a medium charge time.

We also found Valder’s Tier 2 was a little too powerful for our liking. Instead of double damage, we have now decreased damage to 1.5x to see how he performs in competitive settings.

We’re continuing to work out the sweet spot for Trebuchets, due to how dominant they can can be. In this update we’ve reduced the damage they do to structures by 15%

We’re actively monitoring Discord and Reddit for all feedback, so keep talking about your games and letting us know about your competitive highs and woes!

Bug Fixes

We’ve been addressing some critical issues, including game crashes that occurred after suspending multiplayer games and bugs that caused soft-locks when using certain gamepad buttons. Performance and functionality issues have been tackled for better stability.

We’ve also put a lot of work into mitigating connection errors and  solving filter menu issues to improve Multiplayer. Additionally, we’ve fixed various visual bugs and localisation issues to ensure consistency across different languages. Check out the patch notes at the bottom of this post for the full list of fixes!

Modding Support

Mod Support is now officially live! Previously available in the preview branch, our modding community have been testing Mod Support and making their own! We’re excited to feature some standout mods, including “Wargroove 2: Requiem Thrall,” which expands the Guardian faction, and “Wargroove Triple Trouble,” reintroducing the outlaw faction. For more details and to join the thriving modding community, visit our Discord server and check out the #modding channel.

Wargroove 1 + 2 Physicals

In other exciting news, May saw the release of a limited edition physical bundle of Wargroove 1 + 2 with Super Rare Games. Thanks to you folks, it sold out within 24 hours! For our fans in Japan, we also released another Wargroove 1 + 2 physical edition in collaboration with Happinet. It’s heartening to see such a warm reception for both editions worldwide!

Wargroove 2 Vinyl – Ship to Shore closure.

Unfortunately, Ship to Shore, the manufacturer and distributor of the Wargroove 2 vinyl has closed. Refunds for pre-orders of the vinyl ordered via Ship to Shore should have been processed, but if you haven’t received yours, please contact [email protected] with your order number. We are working on fulfilling any orders made through alternative store fronts. Stay tuned for updates – we’re committed to ensuring this isn’t the end of the journey for Wargroove 2 on vinyl!

The Yetee Merchandise

On a brighter note, we’ve partnered with The Yetee to release some awesome new Wargroove 2 merchandise. Be sure to check out their offerings to show off your Wargroove pride!

Release Notes

Gameplay Changes:

– Made Commander + Unit Balance Changes in 1.2.7

Commanders
Emeric:
– Tier 2 now has slow charge time, increased from fast.

Wulfar:
– Tier 2 now has a medium charge time, increased from fast.
Valder:
– Tier 2 skeleton boost is 150% damage instead of 200% damage on all skeletons.
Units
Trebuchet: Damage vs. structures reduce by 15%

Bug Fixes:

– Addressed the game crash that occurred after suspending a multiplayer game

– Resolved connection error that arose when a player exited the game by pressing the home button and then re-entering

– Fixed pressing unused gamepad buttons leading to a soft-lock in multiplayer map selection

– Fixed Cancel button stopped working after showing a validation error for user-generated maps

– Fixed performance issue when walking around on a story map for some extended time

– Fixed the game crash that followed leaving and re-entering the game using the Switch home button

– Rectified multiplayer filter menu issues with biomes erasing themselves and time of day being erased

– Resolved issues with Ancient warning lore being locked but lore title could be observed

– Fixed issue where Airtroopers could land on each other

– Fixed bug when killing an enemy harpy in a group kill with Nadia’s groove in the Rising Tide campaign Act 2 Mission 1: King’s Cove spawns a new riverboat on every enemy move 

– Addressed Russian localisation issues 

– Fixed instances where Conquest unlocks Achievement had a higher counter than number of actual unlocks

– Fixed render error for units with item equipped overlapping the map border area

– Fixed AI sometimes picking unit type it can’t afford with conversion school

– Event Editor showed missing strings – this has been resolved

– Resolved visual bugs with units equipped with items, especially if placed at the top of the map

– Resolved missing symbol in the Ancient warning, codex

– Conquest was taking 1 extra gold when buying units with Koji – this has been addressed

– Fixed malfunction of Elodie tentacles in the turn after taking over the Kraken – Kraken now untangles itself on the player’s turn when they regain control

– Revised the text description for marksman unit critical hit in languages other than English, which was showing as the WG1 description

– Key Artist has been localized in all languages

– Fixed shouts for Faahri and Pirate units, which were using the Floran variants in custom cutscene tools. 

– Rectified Pistil’s T2 groove spawning glowing orbs 

– Groove boost unlock now grants commanders the correct T1 groove

– Custom difficulty tile now stays selected if this was the last chosen difficulty setting

– Unlocking perks in conquest are now being saved properly 

– Dark Mercia Codex entries get unlocked after unlocking Dark Mecia with conquest shards

– Elodie now receives the groove boost perk when a player plays a long intro – this issue also affected Vesper and has now been resolved

– Resolved error that occurred when recruiting Air Trooper unit in A1M1 after closing the recruit menu

– Fixed inconsistent UI hint system for 4th puzzle in S2M4

– Bulrush objective is no longer marked as successful when Bulrush is attacked

– Fixed incorrect unit order for a spectator when the last human player resigns from a 4-player match

– Game crash during an interactive level while attempting to go back up the map has been addressed

– Solved Pistil bolt issue when it split into 2 or more

– Groove charges are now correct when using Groove Boost

– Emeric’s T2 groove effect no longer persists after the crystal dies

– Fixed issue where the close button in Mods tab was non-functional

– The issue with mod list text being invisible when not highlighted has been fixed

Hey folks!

Hello I’m Simon from Robotality, one of the development leads on Wargroove 2. If you’ve been hanging out in The Wargroove discord, then you may well already know me 🙂 With Wargroove 2 coming to PC and Switch later this year, we thought we’d take the time to give you a sneak peek at some of the new and improved custom creation tools we’ve been working on.

Before we start – if you’re heading to Gamescom this week, come and play Wargroove 2 at the Nintendo area of the Indie Arena Booth! The demo is also fully localised into English, French, German, EU Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.

Firstly, if you’ve used our map and campaign tools before, you’ll be happy to know that all the content (and much more!) will still be available for you to create your best battles. If you’re new to the world of custom creation, these tools have never been easier to jump right into. Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the new additions.

Symmetry Tool
It’s now easier than ever to balance your multiplayer maps with the help of the 5 symmetry tool options. These magical map mirrors will work on tiles, buildings and units. 

Y-Mirror Symmetry

X-Mirror Symmetry

XY-Mirror Symmetry

2x Point Symmetry

4x Point Symmetry

Storytelling & Map-based Cutscene
Being a highly-requested feature, we’ve now added scripting functionalities for units! You can now command your units to perform attacks and movement. Additionally, we’ve also introduced the capability to script special effects directly on to map objects, so you can sprinkle in a little zhuzh and pizzazz onto the battlefield. 

We’ve also made significant strides in dialogue options. Our multiple-choice dialogue system now enables branched scripts, helping you deliver a more personalized narrative journey. 

For those who enjoy story-driven experiences, you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve also added story-only maps. This means you can now enjoy non-combat stories, which you’ll see utilised in our own campaigns where you can interact with characters and objects.

Weather and daytime visuals can now be altered on the fly, primarily for storytelling purposes, be it a skirmish in the sun or a raid during a stormy night.

Lastly, we’ve introduced a screenshake feature for those scenes that call for a little wibble wobble.

Wang Tilesets
Why is it called that? It’s named after mathematician, Hao Wang, who coined the term to describe tile arrangements that had matching edges without breaks in their pattern. For Wargroove 2 we looked holistically at all of the creation tool feedback and felt Wang tilesets were the answer.

One of the largest bits of feedback that we got from our fine map-making community is that the original Wargroove tileset felt limited due to the kind of tiles that could be placed next to one another. To solve this issue we extended the complexity of the tileset and made it from a partial Wang tileset into a complete Wang tilest.

Sounds fancy you say, but what brings this to the table for us map makers? Well glad you asked: In short, way more flexibility. You can now place nearly any combination of tiles against each other without breaking the map: Want to have a stretch of islands connected via beaches that the player can walk over? Easy.

Have roads that are broader than 1 tile? No problem. 

Walls that can be combined into whole structures.? Now possible.

Deep Sea that touches the coast? Sure thing.

This feature is hard to describe as it is a very technical change but the result is super obvious once you have started making maps. You should now hit nearly no limits on how tiles can be placed. Previously maps looked a bit confusing 

Other Cool Additions
We want to make map-making as simple as possible. So whether you made a misclick with your placement or simply want to try a different option, the undo and redo feature comes to your rescue.

One of the most significant updates in Wargroove 2 is the addition of scripted bonus objectives for maps – which you’ll also get to sink your teeth into in the campaign too! This new map creation feature not only introduces an extra layer of challenge to your gameplay, but also offers opportunities for additional rewards for your players

If you’ve had the chance to play our Conquest Mode demo then you’ll know we’ve added some super cool items to bolster your units and give them that much-needed edge. In creator mode, units can now hold items, adding an element of strategy and offering diverse possibilities for gameplay. Similarly, maps can also have items, helping encourage player exploration and even tempting them to overextend themselves…

We’ve also introduced a new feature that allows you to spawn units inside travel boats or wagons via script. This gives you more control over units’ deployment and increases the strategic depth of your maps.

And finally, our new toolset also brings with it three new tilesets: cut forest, abyss, and abyss bridge, and we can’t wait to see what kind of creative things you do with them! 

Before we sign off, we want to give a shout out to all the closed beta testers who’ve been helping us refine the custom content tools for this game. Having seasoned community members, who love to create and share has empowered us to deliver the best version of these tools, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

Until next time!

Simon and the Robotality team 

Hi everyone!

Today we’re sharing a mini blog update to reveal our fantastic new key art for Wargroove 2! To celebrate, we’re also extending the Steam Next Fest demo for 48 hours. That means you have until 6pm BST on Wednesday 28th June to download the demo, and play the updated Conquest mode and Multiplayer maps. Enjoy folks!

Key Art

This time we’ve teamed up with Vancouver-based artist, Justin Chan, to bring the Saffron Isles to life. A BIG thank you to Justin for creating this beautiful artwork.

The key art sees the return of Starbound’s Nuru, everyone’s best boy Caesar, notorious fire-starter Nadia, as well as Wulfar in his all-new pirate get-up. Look at that hammer upgrade!

You might also spot some new unit types in the background too. More details on these later!

We hope you’ve been enjoying playing Wargroove 2 in Steam Next Fest. If you did get a chance to try the demo, do make sure to let us know your thoughts and feelings in the feedback thread!

Until next time!

Ahoy mateys!

I’m Hassan, the Narrative Designer on Wargroove 2! I’ve been responsible for expanding Aurania and the events happening within it since the first Wargroove. I’ve also led the charge in building the journeys of the new Commanders and factions we’ll meet in Wargroove 2!

When we revealed Wargroove 2 back in March, we also introduced the latest Commander to the Wargroove roster: Nadia, a notorious pirate known to her enemies as Captain Firebird.

Hailing from the Saffron Isles, Nadia leads a formidable crew of pirates who are feared for their ruthless raids and plundering of the islands surrounding Aurania. During Wargroove 2’s campaign you’ll get acquainted with Nadia’s crewmates, including the wanted men Janjak “The Ripper”, and the grinning devil Aki the “Akuma”.

Nadia and her crew often run afoul of the Heavensong Navy, who have several bounties out for Nadia and her rivals. But despite Heavensong’s bravado, they are still to this day terrified at the sight of the pirates’ skull and crossbones flag -iIt wasn’t long ago after all that Heavensong’s previous Emperor was killed by an army of undead skeletons.

While some commanders might prefer to stay back and let their armies do the dirty work, Nadia fearlessly charges into battle, wielding her signature flamethrower and striking fear into the hearts of her enemies, who believe she can command the sea itself.

Nadia’s Groove revolves around her flamethrower, which becomes increasingly powerful as it charges up. At tier 1, it can deal significant damage to a few enemies in close proximity. However, once fully charged, it becomes an unstoppable force, leaving a trail of scorch marks and burn damage in its wake.

Playing as Nadia requires a strategic approach, balancing the risks of putting her on the frontline with the rewards of her devastating attacks. But for those who are up for the challenge, she is an exciting and formidable addition to the Wargroove 2 roster.

Fun fact: Before Nadia had a flamethrower, she had a pet parrot! While we would have loved to keep this addition, once the flamethrower came into play we found Nadia had too many moving elements for the parrot to stay feasible. We miss you, dear parrot!

But while the parrot is no more, you might have already caught glimpses of Nadia’s pet battlepig named Nufnuf! 🐷 Pigs are basically the same as having a pet dog, right? Maybe we’ll share more on Nufnuf in a full Pirate Faction blog deepdive!

Thanks for reading, and we hope you’ll enjoy getting to know Nadia more when Wargroove 2 releases. In the meantime, we’ll have many more delightful development updates over on the Wargroove Twitter account, and our official Discord server.

Until next time!

– Robotality & Chucklefish

Hi everyone! I’m Stefan, Lead Game Designer on Wargroove 2! I’m really happy to be the first on the Robotality team to bring our own voice to the Wargroove Dev Blog, and we’re excited to bring you all the juicy details and deep dives into what’s new in Wargroove 2.

It’s been a busy month for Chucklefish and the Robotality team. After announcing Wargroove 2 in March, we made our way to PAX East with our shiny new demo. It was great to meet members of the Wargroove community in person and we received a lot of valuable feedback for the in-development Conquest Mode. Players on Steam also had the opportunity to give the new game-mode a try and we’ve been left with a to-do list of exciting changes we’ve been digging into!

Today, I want to dive a little into what Conquest Mode is and what changes we’re hoping to make in the future! In the demo we played as Nadia, a fiery pirate wielding a ferocious flamethrower. We’ll be doing a deepdive into the latest sea-faring Commander to join the roster in the near-future!

Conquest Mode is our take on a turn-based strategy roguelike experience using the well established Wargroove formula (with a Robotality twist!). It’s a single player game mode that offers lots of replayability and a chance to truly master turn based mechanics by ramping up the ante and putting player’s strategic abilities to the test. Some goals for Conquest Mode include:

• Battle through a randomly generated series of quick paced bite-sized skirmishes.
• Your army is persistent: if you lose a unit, they will not respawn in the next map.
• Encounter mystery events where you can gain recruits, unique items or gold.
• Select between a pool of possible starting troops and build a strategy that assures your route to victory.
• Take on increasingly challenging trials by unlocking new Commanders.

The PAX demo was our opportunity to put our ideas to the test. We had amazing feedback from members of the community who felt like the additional challenge, replayability and unique take on this old formula brings something new and exciting. So thank you to everyone who played, and especially to those who took the time to leave feedback, it means a lot to us! There’s a few things we hope to address in upcoming iterations of conquest mode. Most notably:

• Giving the player more choices. Instead of a single blessing at the beginning, we want players to have multiple opportunities to refresh their army and gain new perks. We also hope to offer more variety in starting troops so players can test out a range of armies to progress through a conquest, offering even more replayability than before!
• Make blessings permanent, so future recruits benefit from perks the player has gained earlier in a run.
• Improve the UX on the Conquest Mode screen. The map screen didn’t work as we’d hoped in communicating where players could go next – we aim to give the Conquest map a bit of a face lift to make it easier to plan the next move. We’ll also be reworking the controller support on this screen again to improve its functionality.
• Improve fog of war. No more cheating AI!

This is the first of many updates to come! Other than conquest mode, the team have been busy making each of Wargroove 2’s campaigns a pixel-perfect experience. If you want updates on future developments, be sure to follow us on the Wargroove Twitter or our Discord. Next time, we’ll be deep diving into our new Commander, Nadia – with some details about her story and what strategies she offers!

It’s that time of the year again where we celebrate gaming’s best armoured good boy, Caesar. If we’re being honest, the reason this post exists is because we wanted to take trip down memory lane and wax lyrical about how much we love his cute, floofy face.

But before we kick off, we’d like to shout out to our merch partners The Yetee, who are helping us raise money for The Humane Society International by selling these brand-new cute ‘Doggo Allover’ tees. The Humane Society is one of the biggest animal protection organisations in the world, and do fantastic work including saving dogs from the dog meat trade. We’re waiving all profits which will go directly to charity, so check them out if you’re feeling generous and looking for something cool for yourself or as a gift! (They also come in black).

Without further ado, let’s dive into it!

At Chucklefish we are absolutely dog people. We often have 2 of them roaming around the office on any given day and if you’ve followed us on social media or watched our game credits, then you’ll know they’re an essential part of the development team. So, back in 2017 when we first started working on Wargroove, we knew immediately we wanted to have some kind of faction or unit that featured a dog. You can see below exactly how that went.

We wanted dogs to have a meaningful part in Wargroove, which is how we came up with the individual dog units and how we eventually ended up with Caesar as you know him today.

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However, the search for the perfect kind of dog was difficult. We looked at dozens of images of dogs in armour, spend 2 days straight spamming one another with pictures of dogs we wanted to cuddle and protect, but ultimately decided that Caesar was to be a Great Pyrenees. They’re strong, powerful, and they do the cute thing where they look like they’re smiling all the time.

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We also had the absolute pleasure of seeing Caesar come to life in The Line’s Wargroove intro scene which can be viewed here. The goal was to show the deep-rooted bond between Mercia and Caesar, but demonstrate that he was a strong, independent good boy too.

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We also got to celebrate his adorableness in plushie-form when we partnered with The Yetee! They did such a wonderful job making him as cute and cuddly as possible, but you just know that Caesar would be ready to protec and attac when he needed to be.

Caesar also took time out of his busy schedule of defending Cherrystone Queendom and getting belly rubs to join the cast in both TINY METAL: FULL METAL RUMBLE and Rivals of Aether! He’s gotten into all sorts of hijinks this year; you can pick up TM:FMR DLC ‘Caesar’s Rescue’ completely free, as well as a free Buddy option in RoA today!

It’s been over a year since Caesar hit your screens, and we hope to see his snoot again in the future 👀. Thanks for reading through and celebrating just how wonderful Caesar is with us!

Hey folks,

Hurray! Today we’re launching v2.1.0 across PC, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One. This patch mainly focuses on competitive play and online bug fixes. Thanks to our friends at Groove of War for the feedback!

Gameplay Balancing:

• Fog of War sight ranges reduced across the board
• Single Player and Co-op campaign balance changes due to sight range reduction
• When a unit is ambushed and ends on a neutral unit, it will backtrack instead of dying
  
• Nuru’s groove charge rate reduced from fast to medium
• Spectator can now spectate online campaign matches

Other:

• End current campaign map from lobby screen command added. If you’ve been experiencing issues continuing your online campaign, visit this thread for more info
• Added 45 Minute Chess Timer option
• Only hosts can add CPU players to multiplayer matches
• Event Editor actions that remove or modify units can now affect units in transports
• Event Editor conditions that check for unit presence now include units in transports

Bug fix:

• Save/resume desync bug in online matches
• Harpoon ships don’t die on reefs when its raining
• Spearman in the Act 1 Mission 3 tutorial now spawns in correct location
• Outlaw faction units now correctly display the codex button

We haven’t forgotten about you, PlayStation players! A combination of submission mishaps and the current pandemic have meant that Double Trouble has been delayed for longer than we would have liked. We hope to be able to bring you the DLC soon and will let you know a date as we can. Thank you for being patient!

Also don’t forget, you can come hang out with us over on Discord or Twitter.

Hi guys, senior level designer Armagon, back again!

Yesterday I unveiled the first of our map editor video guides. Now today, as promised, I have the next one locked and loaded for you!

This second video takes a deep dive into how to design a skirmish map with competitive play in mind. When writing this guide, I received valuable input from some of our most dedicated competitive mapmakers in the Groove of War community, so I have confidence in this guide as a good starting point.

Hopefully these first two videos will prove useful to you folks! They took quite a bit of time for me to write and produce, but I’ve already started preparations on the third, so I’m hoping to get it to you before too long. In the meantime, be sure to let us know what you’re most interested in learning next! I’ll be looking to tackle the topics that benefit the most people across the board, so let your voices be heard!

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Come talk to us over on Twitter, Discord and the Wargroove subreddit.

Hey everybody, senior level designer, Armagon here!

In the wake of Wargroove: Double Trouble being released, I’ve been tackling something of a personal project at Chucklefish; something that I’m hoping will prove useful to a lot of our players, or at least those who are interested in making their own content with the game’s robust tools. Today I’m pleased to be releasing the first of several video guides on using Wargroove’s map editor!

This first video is ideal for beginners who are new to the editor and want to know how to set up their map, and how to use the most essential tools to start laying things down.

If you like what you see, be sure to come back tomorrow for our second video which will delve into how to design your own multiplayer maps!

Talk to us over on Twitter, Discord and the Wargroove subreddit.

Oh lawd, he comin’!

I’m so happy to finally share with you this adorable Caesar plush!

(Wargroove vinyl for scale – sold separately via Yetee Records & Boss Battle Records)

I’ve been working with The Yetee on this very good boy for some months now. The idea to make a plush Caesar has been floating around since the early days of Wargroove development, and it was a pleasure to bring him to life with the Yetee’s talented designers and all their plush expertise.

We went through a few iterations until he was just right, consulting the development team here at Chucklefish all the way through. We frequently referred to photos of the dog breed that Caesar is based on, which, if you’re a Caesar fan you’ll undoubtedly know is a Great Pyrenees. The trickiest parts were the ears and the expression, we wanted him to be as cute as can be so, in the end, we went for Caesar’s happy expression which you see when he wins a battle (or when it’s dinner time).

Our Caesar Plush is available to purchase right now on The Yetee store for $26, and ships worldwide from the US.

I hope you all enjoy this huggable pup as much as we do!