#2 Weekly Fix 1 – From Now On, Weekly Updates Every Monday!
We want you to be part of the journey that is building this game. That’s why we’ve decided to share our progress with you every Monday in a weekly update. If you’re hungry for even more info or want to be a deeper part of the development process - not just reading about us, but actually talking to us - then join our Discord server.
Quick note before we dive in: as many of you already know, we don’t have a publisher backing us, and we’re currently unable to work full-time on the project. That said, we love this game, and we put in as much time as we possibly can. Whether it’s early mornings, late nights, or weekends - we’re working on it whenever we get the chance. Still, there may be some weeks where we don’t make big progress. If that happens, we’ll be honest about it, because transparency is something we truly value.
This one might be a bit of a longer read, since we want to give you a more detailed picture of where things stand right now.
Let’s dive in!
In our first article → Spirit of Tazo: Opening Strike ← we already gave you a glimpse of what we’re working on. But now it’s time to take a closer look at our current progress.
One thing you should know about us: we love games! – Shocking, right? 😄
When it comes to PC or console titles, our favorites are MMORPGs and MOBAs. These genres really inspired us to create a similar kind of strategic and competitive experience - but for mobile.
The idea for this project was born back in 2018: build a mobile game that focuses specifically on combat, its tactical depth, and knowing your characters inside and out.
We knew from the start that we wouldn’t be able to compete with the big studios in terms of visuals - for two main reasons:
- We’re not graphic artists,
- And we don’t have the budget for 3D models, animations, or textures.
But we realized that what might seem like a “limitation” could actually be a strength. So, we stripped the gameplay down to its essence, removed movement from the equation, but kept the action real-time.
One of the best things about games like these is the co-op experience - sharing the fun with your friends. A unique twist in our game is that players really need to be in sync to win. That made it a no-brainer: coordination would be a key mechanic.
Of course, sometimes you just want to hop into a quick solo match. So, taking into account what works well on mobile, we decided to support 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 battles.
And since the game is PvP-focused, ranking naturally becomes an important feature. We won’t hide it - it would make us incredibly proud if this game someday made its way to an Esports stage. In the future, we’ll place strong emphasis on features that help you measure and understand your performance - but more on that later.
Where we’re at now
We’re getting very close to launching our first closed pre-alpha test. In this version, our plan is to let players try out three characters in 1v1 mode (no ranked matches yet), with four unique abilities each.
The main goal of this test is to evaluate the technical foundation of the game - to see if it’s as solid as we want it to be.
Two of the characters - Anchorn and Kaenu - are already fully ready for this test. The third character, Zyn, is still in progress: we’re finishing the implementation of her four abilities. The animations and visual effects are already done.
Before the pre-alpha test, we’ll publish separate posts introducing each character.
Currently, the game has no audio yet - we’ll see if we manage to get that far before the test. But as we mentioned, audio isn’t the focus of this test. It’s all about testing the technical implementation.
Speaking of which, we still need to review our system to ensure we’re logging data in all the right places (don’t worry - it’s all system-level data, nothing personal! 🙂), so we don’t miss anything important.
What happened this past week?
A few weeks ago, we received the new UI design from our graphic designer.
Before that, in true dev fashion, every screen outside the battlefield looked like neatly aligned squares. 😅 Once we had the new designs, we implemented them right away - but the process flow also changed.
Previously, players would first choose the team size (1v1, 2v2, 3v3), then select a character, then queue up and wait for an opponent.
In the new UI:
- Practice and Ranked modes have been added,
- The team size selector is now right on the main screen,
- And character selection now happens after matchmaking, so in 2v2 and 3v3 matches, players can see which characters their teammates are choosing.
This required a full overhaul of the matchmaking and selection process in the background.
The mobile client now fully supports this flow, but at the time, we hadn’t yet updated the server logic - because we also received the website design around then.
We decided it was time to finally go public and start sharing updates - so we shifted our focus to getting the website ready.
Now, the site is live - and in fact, you’re reading this article through our new admin interface! Of course, both the site and admin tools will continue to evolve.
So… what did we do last week?
We finally got back to the core server logic and began implementing the changes needed for the new UI flow.
We also squashed a couple of minor bugs on the website:
- Fixed a bug where the homepage image slider on mobile was spinning out of control
- Continued polishing the admin interface
If you find any bugs - whether on the site or while testing the game - we’d really appreciate it if you let us know in the right channel on our Discord server! 😊
Thank you!
Thanks for reading this (not-so-short 😄) post!
We’ve embarked on a journey that means a lot to us, and we’re beyond happy to have your attention and support.
We’ll be back next Monday with the next weekly update.
Until then - come say hi on Discord!
Tian