(due a ✨wrist injury✨, I’m writing this with voice dictation // one hand. So please excuse if there are more typos, or weird formatting than usual.)

Hot diggity! A lot happened this past month! I find myself forced to bury ledes with other ledes.

Discord

We quietly launched our own Discord server a few weeks ago, at long last! Here’s an invite link.

As a tech-company-hater, I find myself unable to be overly enthusiastic about channeling a community into another walled garden, but as things currently stand there’s simply no other platform that works as well for hosting this sort of thing. My heart yearns for a world where we were doing straight forums or IRC or something instead; I’m squaring it by saying that our documentation will never solely live in a Discord server; the intention is to set up an ad-free community wiki (like how Guild Wars does it) once we get to our “documentation and onboarding” phase later this year.

Anyway, it’s a good time over there! We got highlight reels, bug reports, (still unofficial) mods + maps, and when we need quick feedback on a feature or additional content that’s where we ask it. Eld and Darloth are our first moderators; you may recognize Eld from the approximately ten thousand other Lancer servers he’s moderated, and Darloth from modding the rest of the Rebake grunts into LT.

Giant Bomb interview

Giant Bomb (which went independent from Fandom last year! Congrats to them!) reached out and I sat down with Chuck for a checks notes one hour and twenty minute “quick look” where we made a character and played some Lancer Tactics on a call. It was an honor to be showcased by such a prestigious channel; love to see what they’re doing in the aftermath of such a roller coaster of a journey as a publication.

Trailer

Look at this! A 60 second video by Michael Cox that showcases what Lancer Tactics is all about! Critics (disclosure: me) are saying it’s the best game trailer to ever be made?? Wow.

An interesting aftershock/anecdote of posting this was seeing an aggregator youtube channel re-upload it (adding “official trailer” text to the thumbnail). At time of writing, has 150,000 views; 10x as much as our own. I’m of two minds; views are views regardless of provenance, they were mindful enough to include a link to our Steam wishlist page (more on that in a second), and it was genuinely nice to get a significant bump in visibility without having to hit the media circuit.

However, this appears to be a channel that consists of entirely other people’s work, with the primary value-add is aggregation. The business plan is a clear numbers game: re-upload every single game trailer you can find & get ad revenue from the few that happen to take off. Fascinating.

Steam wishlist page

In preparation for a post-Kickstarter-funded world, we now have a presence on Steam; you may wishlist Lancer Tactics at your leisure.

As a reminder, we still have a fair ways to go post-Kickstarter to get the game Steam-ready. To the best reception there as possible, I believe it needs additional single-player content, controller support, and better new-to-Lancer onboarding. We are currently aiming by end of 2026, but that’s not set in stone. And to answer the inevitable FAQ: yes, if you’ve backed the project on Kickstarter or bought it on itch, you will receive a Steam key once they become available.

Funny story: a general rule of thumb is that you want to, through months of effort and posting and media pushes, build up to at least 10,000 wishlists before you launch on Steam. Here’s, ah, here’s where we ended up after the first week after we pushed the trailer and page live:

Over 33,000! Y’all really like Lancer, huh. And as this makes clear, it really was the visibility from the repost channel that provided the biggest chunk of those. Fascinating. Well, that makes our job easier & will make prepping for that launch so much less of a nail-biter.

Itch.io #1 bestseller?

At time of writing it looks like we’ve dipped down a little bit, but in the wake of all that visibility, Lancer Tactics has been hovering around the top slot for best-selling paid game on itch.io. That’s wild!!! And has a few implications:

• for the first time since the Kickstarter completed, we’ll be able to start paying ourselves. Other than our initial payments, the three of us in the core team have been doing this work on-spec for years and it was getting a bit tight. We’re aiming for $1k a month each, which might barely be sustainable at this rate. It feels like after carrying LT for so long, its engine has revved up and has started being able to help carry us.
• itch.io must be making, like, no money?? If this is what peak performance for paid games looks like, I really really hope they have a long tail or a sales leader elsewhere on the site (game assets maybe? or nsfw comics?). God bless them & their small team for making such a great platform.
• we’ve been considering doing Early Access on Steam in order to help relieve some financial pressure on ourselves. If that can happen through itch alone, we may be able to avoid putting ourselves through the Steam ringer and stay in the comfortable game incubating environment here instead.

Wrap-up

Hey! Our target end date for the Kickstarter-funded 3-year development cycle stretch goal is at the end of this month! That’ll mark the three-year anniversary of Lancer Tactics. Because being graded is fun, for the next update I’ll be writing a report card & postmortem for the project. What did we do? What did we say we would do? What did we do that we didn’t say we would do? Tune in next time!

As always there’s a new build out & ready too, on itch.io. Here’s the changelog!

Changelog

New Stuff

• Finished optionals for all the remaining in PCs: archer, assassin, barricade, bastion, spector, pyro, hornet, goliath, hive, engineer, breacher, scourer, aegis, ace, seeder, mirage, bombard. This was a two week dead sprint to finish! (and I am sure entirely unrelated to the wrist problems) I’m v happy we’ll be able to check NPC classes off the report card.

• more icons from Alicia; talents and Core Bonuses
• more sfx from Robi
• new shield fx for systems from Jude
• melting down adds a persistent fx to that unit
• From connor, the barricade cube is no longer a plain gray box; it’s now a gray box with hexagon indentations

Misc

• added “randomizer” kits that you can add to opfor units to get random different optionals
• added “randomizer” NPC classes to get a random striker, controller, etc
• reinforcement groups now control whether they deploy randomized, not the event; can toggle it in Instant Action screen
• Add setting to skip shader warmup on first load
• change the baseline level of the out-of-bounds so elevation 0 sticks out of it

UI

• “add pilot” button straight on each folder
• added button to expand/collapse “using action” text boxes
• Show attack bonus and accuracy for NPC weapons
• attack preview lists potential reactions for that attack (not guaranteed)
• added this sick tile-dissolve effect, inspired by watching my gf play Marathon (which itself was inspired by the artist Antireal)

Character Sheet

• Character sheet got a design facelift from Alicia.

• show weapon type restrictions in weapon mod tooltips
• NPC character sheet can toggle an unlock and add any NPC system
• fix back button on character sheet not get shaded out by modals
• added ability to offset portrait slices with an awkward dpad. prompted by an actual code contribution from Darloth.

• unit barks can talk about speaker or target

Portrait Maker

• Portrait maker got a design facelift from Alicia.

• as seen above, added “background” slice type that is kept somewhat separate from the main portrait so it can be clipped differently in dialogue panels

• Did a color overhaul; there’s more options, a better yellow and red, and better contrast for very dark or light colors.
• Carpenter rekeyed many assets to have better contrasts
• sorted hair options by length
• Add 4th color channel to pilot tokens so they can have skin + 3 outfit colors

Editor

• added a system of “sitrep tags” for units, so triggers and the editor can mark & check arbitrary tags onto specific units. These persist through multiple combats and event full repairs so could be very powerful for module makers!
• can set colors of the out-of-bounds area

• can add nametags to speakers for conversations
• added “unseen” makeup for characters, to have them show up and take up a slot but not be visible; can use for someone talking from “off-camera”
• move long speech bubbles to keep them onscreen
• added additional things to check to the unit bool trigger fetcher (“is_mech”, “is_drone”, etc)
• added “is this unit a grunt/other template” fetcher
• Added fetcher for if setpiece or doodad or block are destroyed at tile
• added a flag to the unit death event to skip the explosion
• update level filename display after saving in editor
• increase size limit for compression/decompression to 1MB for complicated map geometries
• significant refactor of block-rendering system to allow only rebuilding portions of the map that need it on map editor changes/map damage; from 100ms on a change to like 4ms.

Bugs

• fix the fact that I broke barks last month
• fixed up z-indexing and cycle wrapping issues in mech catalog screen
• fix losing the selected sitrep in instant action config on save/load
• can no longer double-equip ammo case
• fix iskander mine deployer triggering off itself, allowing dumping all your mines at once
• fix: reinforced cabling grapple swing and drag down should both be usable on the same turn
• better flank trigger UX when attacking multiple possible units
• fix stasis shield not correctly providing soft cover & blocking attacks
• gravity gun can now be blocked by heavy frame
• can correctly trigger duelist III with non-main weapons
• fix both semplar vigilo + covering fire being able to trigger on the same movement
• jackhammer round does the damage it’s supposed to & only knockbacks characters
• asssassin drone can now redeploy correctly
• can’t use Leadership talent to issue orders to drones
• only ignore adjacent hard cover if we can see around/over it
• cancel actions if they were somehow disabled following comp/con assist movement e.g. getting jammed from a witch’s chain on your way to attack
• fix situation where events are sometimes skipped if queued by a child event; aka boosting now clears hidden correctly
• fix being able to use a CP multiple times by overcharging on a subsequent turn
• lucifer no longer consumes two charges
• Fixed annihilator targetable tile calculation during overwatch
• can use “shift payload” even when you’re out of speed
• drones don’t contest payloads, and payload no longer reports that it’s contested by mines, drones, & sealant goop
• can’t move payload when intangible or flying and not adjacent
• can’t stabilize your reactor when you have 0 stress
• don’t show wreck token in chits until you’re actually dead with 0 stress
• gravity gun movement ignores fall damage unless the target point is at least 3 spaces below the target unit
• Deep well heat sink persists longer so it can affect other at-end-of-turn-effects
• Fix double grapple application
• Enforce all attachments need to be adjacent
• fix countdown and reset for Gunslinger Die when using IKWMH on an AOE aux
• gunslinger die resets on rests (aka spending repairs in downtime)
• give integrated weapons an “integrated mount” tag on their tooltip
• firing ordnance weapons as freebies is just fine, actually; stabilizer mod doesn’t permanently disable vorpal gun
• can’t leader open channels for nonmechs
• Lockbreaker only locks you out of future attacks if it’s not from a rxn attack
• Lockbreaker correctly interacts with integrated weapons like Fuel Rod Gun
• can’t lockbreak on a second normal attack on a turn
• Change order of triggers so integrated weapon happens before lockbreaker movement, so it doesn’t look like you’re lockbreaking the integrated shot
• engaging an enemy with lockbreaker (or any other system) on their turn saps their current speed
• apparently orochi drones and acrobatics rxns were not supposed to be limited per-round
• drone atks don’t suffer impairment when their owner is impaired
• don’t clear prone when gear that caused it is destroyed (eg that one demolisher trait that I’m forgetting while I write this)
• Fix cataphract impale not having its grapple clear correctly, allowing spooky grapple-at-a-distance
• Fix cataphract impale’s targets not clearing until-end-of-move abilities at the end of the movement (ie Metalmark flash cloak)
• demolister’s destroyer to 6+ recharge & full action, jets cost 4 heat
• fix pyros trying to use their flamethowers through walls at targets they didn’t have LOS at
• fix ace barrel roll not being on recharge
• archer suppress impairs target
• sniper’s moving target correctly costs a reaction
• engineer flak cannon only +acc against flying targets
• engineer target designator actually works
• ai avoids going into firebreak shield (at least a little better)

It was a bit existentially touch-and-go there for a week or so but it now looks like my wrist is on the mend. Remember to stretch; angry tendons and nerves are no joke & will stop you from being able to touch keyboards.

Olive