PILOT TRAITS & PROGRESSION

We want pilots to be a meaningful part of the game rather than just a name and portrait that you occasionally assign to a mech. In our next update, the pilot system will receive a total overhaul.

Pilots will gain experience and level up based on their experiences in combat. A set of traits will gradually unlock with level progression. Available traits depend on class and differ between pilots. The effects of traits range from simple buffs to new abilities, making different play styles and pilot specialization more rewarding.

On top of progression, pilot states will become more complex. Pilots will gain fatigue from combat, receive injuries and even acquire unique negative traits if you mistreat them. We hope these additions (and more changes we aren’t yet ready to detail) will make your campaigns more interesting and would give you a reason to glance away from the shiny mechs, if only for a second!

OVERWORLD

We’re also improving the gameplay on the world map. Our original approach where the world was generated at the start of the campaign had its benefits, but made it difficult to achieve a balanced campaign experience. You could fight the same kind of an enemy over and over, miss some mission types entirely, run out of enemies during contests, etc. We reconsidered how we approach the world map and switched to a director system that will consider the history of your campaign and spawn missions that are most likely to be fresh and appropriate for the current phase of your quest. You won’t be locked to a single option and will continue to have agency over the direction you chart in your campaign, but we feel that the reworked generation will provide a much more varied and interesting experience to every player.

With these changes, we also took the opportunity to rework and improve almost every aspect of the overworld gameplay. You will be able to see all mission details, including potential rewards, right from the world map without entering briefings. Contest mechanics, escalation levels, dialogs, quests, unit repair & pilot healing, resupplying and more have been reworked to create a tighter, more interesting experience.

QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS

Finally, this next update will feature lots of quality of life improvements. Some of them include reworked pilot, briefing, debriefing and dialog screens; a quest system that guides you through the campaign and input hints. A new codex screen will help you remember or learn the myriad of mechanics present in the game without needing to restart your campaign to revisit one-time tutorials (in addition to some interesting lore!). We are also hard at work on adding gamepad support across the entire game.

SIGN UP TO PLAYTEST

We’re still a ways off from release, but we ARE gearing up to playtest rough versions of these changes. If you’d like to help shape this update, please join our Discord and sign up for the playtest here! We’re looking for players of all experience levels, from those who’ve never played PB before, to Brigadiers who mod their own mechs – each unique perspective is super valuable to us!

Last but not least, we really want to thank everyone for playing and supporting Phantom Brigade. Our review score has been steadily improving since launch, and it really means the world to us to see our updates be warmly received. We read every bit of feedback we get (special shoutout to players who submit in-game reports, that data is super helpful!) and it continues to shape our plans and work. Thank you Brigadiers!

— The Phantom Brigade Team (Artyom, Dakota, Pavel and Jaymee)

The post Next on Phantom Brigade: Pilots and Overworld appeared first on Brace Yourself Games.

One of the new features we’re most excited about in this patch is backpacks. These backpacks are additional attachments to your mech that may be things like:

• Active defense systems shooting down incoming projectiles
• Minelayers blocking key chokepoints
• Enormous missile launchers capable of leveling entire enemy bases

We hope they can serve as an exciting building block for your mech and bring interesting twists into your fights along with all the other features and changes in this patch, like new status effects, subsystems, weapons, and more.

Good luck out there!

Read the full patch notes here. 

The post Phantom Brigade Update 1.3: Back and Packed! appeared first on Brace Yourself Games.

Hello Brigadiers! I hope you’re ready for what’s in store for patch 1.2. We have a whole bunch of updates to show you, but the star of this update is BOSS BATTLES. Take on these massive constructs to liberate a province and gain unique rewards!

Read the full patch notes here.

The post Phantom Brigade Update #2: Show ’em Who’s Boss appeared first on Brace Yourself Games.

We wanted to drop in with a quick developer update before the holidays. If you’ve been around Discord or the Steam forums over the last few months, you probably saw mention that we’re hard at work on a big update for 1.2. 

We are happy to report that most of the changes targeted for 1.2 are complete, and we’re now working on stabilizing and polishing the experience. We were originally hoping to have it ready before the year was out, but we’d like a little more time to cook, so instead we’re aiming for a release window in January.

CONSIDER JOINING OUR DISCORD!

Before we jump into the details, I just want to say we’ve been giving some regular updates on our progress over in the Brace Yourself Games Discord. If you haven’t joined yet, we would love to see you there!

SO WHAT’S IN 1.2? 

Now onto the juicy stuff! We took your feedback to heart and prioritized addressing one of the most common notes: combat variety. We’ve worked hard to improve on that front, making new locations, scenarios, and systems allowing for greater variety. Now that we’re in the polish stage, here’s an overview of what you can expect:

• New mission types attached to commonly encountered entities such as convoys, patrols, and military bases.
• New combat maps attached to commonly encountered location types.
• Streamlined contest mechanics preventing an indefinite raiding state and deprioritizing repetitive patrol encounters.
• New special encounters you’ll need to complete to finish province liberation.
• By popular request, an ability to replay the last turn of combat encounters.
• Projectile prediction system helping you foresee and evade individual shots before they happen.
• A new way to upgrade your favorite equipment to a higher level.
• And more!

Thank you all so much for your patience, and happy holidays! We look forward to sharing more soon! In the meantime, here are some sneak peeks at what’s to come.

AND NOW… SOME SCREENSHOTS!

Uh oh, looks like the mobile base is in danger!

What is this large anomaly on the briefing map?

Yikes, that’s a lot of things to dodge.

Something looms in the distance.

Some new scenic map shots – Is that water? I wonder if that can help you cool off…

Take cover!

The post Phantom Brigade Dev Blog #2 appeared first on Brace Yourself Games.

Below are some highlights that you can look forward to from the 1.1 patch!

Timeline action dragging: It is now possible to click and drag any action on the timeline to reposition it, making precise timing of actions far easier to achieve!

Improved melee system: Melee attacks could previously fail, even if the timeline prediction showed that they would be successful.  Our new melee system makes use of shockwaves that have a one-to-one correlation between prediction and execution.  Additionally, the shockwave system looks amazing and will give our designers more flexibility when creating new melee weapons!

Improved combat variety: In the 1.1 patch we have taken some initial small steps toward addressing your feedback about content variety.  The first action we took was relaxing content restrictions, allowing a greater variety of existing maps and units to appear in combat. Secondly, patrols (the most commonly encountered overworld entity) have now been split into multiple types, each fielding different units.

Landing prediction UI: Enemy reinforcements are now easier to spot and less frustrating to play against thanks to a clearer UI indication of where and when they will arrive.

New UI for predicting crashes: Collisions should now be easier for players to predict and understand thanks to an improved UI.

Improved turret behavior: Turrets will now detect targets within a rotating cone and fire at appropriate ranges, creating a more dynamic and interesting obstacle for players.

Finalized Blackbird armor: In Phantom Brigade 1.0, the Blackbird armor set had unfinished art and missing arms.  We have corrected this oversight in 1.1!

Other fixes:

• Significant improvements to our modding system, including simplified mod installation, support for 2D pilot portraits, easier modding with text editors, UI sprite mod support, a greatly extended scenario system, and much more.
• Shotguns have been rebalanced so that they no longer have a narrow effective range forcing a player to pixel hunt for a perfect shot.
• Improved tooltips covering mechanics such as unit repair, workshop level, and barrier.
• Plus a massive number of other bug fixes and improvements!  (Full patch notes will be provided when the update launches!)

We are currently putting the finishing touches on the 1.1 patch, and we look forward to bringing it to you on August 1st!

But what about the future?  We have some good news: Preliminary work has already begun on patch 1.2!  We pay very close attention to the reviews that you write and to the messages that you post, and we hear you loud and clear that Phantom Brigade needs more gameplay variety and more content.  We are working on that as our top priority for patch 1.2.

However, please note that the 1.1 patch that we will release on August 1st is only a quality of life and bug fix patch.  We understand that the 1.1 patch will not address your core concerns with gameplay variety and content, but rest assured that further work on those issues is already underway via our 1.2 patch.

We’d like to thank you all for your feedback and bug reports — your assistance is invaluable as we strive to make Phantom Brigade the best game that it can be.  We look forward to launching our 1.1 patch on August 1st, and we are excited to share more details about the upcoming 1.2 patch, so please stay tuned!

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Your mission is only just beginning, Commander. The end of our Early Access journey is nearly at hand!

Phantom Brigade v1.0 is launching on both Steam and the Epic Games Store on February 28th at 10AM PST!

You can also join us for a free demo during the upcoming Steam NextFest from February 6th at 10AM PST to February 13th. We have some developer livestreams throughout the week as well, so follow us on Twitch and stay tuned for that.

Wishlist Phantom Brigade on Steam or buy it on Epic now!

The post Phantom Brigade is Coming to Steam! appeared first on Brace Yourself Games.

This is a bit of a smaller devblog this month since a lot of our work has been the invisible stuff like optimizations and AI improvements. Please consider this more of a check-in to let you know we’re still chugging along!

That said, we’ve decided to take things back to the beginning this month. Literally — we mean we’ve been listening to feedback and reexamining our tutorial. We’re talking new tutorial scenarios, reworking the prequel battle, and even reorganizing the first province.

This is something we’ve had on our to-do list for a long time, and it was in a lot of the feedback we got from newer players in the last Steam Playtest and at PAX West. As we prepare to ramp up for another Steam Playtest and get even more new eyes on Phantom Brigade, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to revamp the start of the game.

Our goal is to have a more streamlined experience for those starting the game for the first time with improved UI and better tooltips.

Also, we added a third mech with a beam weapon to the tutorial scenario to acquaint new players with a wider range of weapon types.

For all you veteran players out there, that’s probably not what you’re here for. While optimizations, AI improvements, and a tutorial rework is happening, we’re still working on more events, and more map detail.

Thanks for keeping up with us, and keep your eyes peeled for the next Steam Playtest.

Enjoy some screenshots of the updated maps!

The post Phantom Brigade Devblog – September 2022 appeared first on Brace Yourself Games.

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS:

EXTREME MAKEOVER: Pilot portraits, animations, and health systems are totally revamped!
PROTEC AND ATTAC: New protection and destruction combat scenarios!
SMOOTH OPERATOR: Lots of optimizations!
AND MORE!

Phantom Brigade is in Early Access, which means we are actively updating and adding new content based on our roadmap and your wonderful feedback. As we will be skipping September’s update in preparation for the big changes to the pilot system, you can expect the next Tactical Tuesday update on October 18th, 2022 at 11:00AM PST.

See the full patch notes here!

The post Phantom Brigade Update 20: Get in the Mech, Pilot appeared first on Brace Yourself Games.

So while we don’t have anything new for you to get your hands on today, we can give you a behind the scenes look at what August’s update has in store! Let’s dive in.

Pilot Features

You may recall in our State of the Game devblog that we have organized our final series of updates into three “seasons,” making improvements to the overworld, then pilots, and finally, polishing and preparing for Steam. As the bulk of our overworld changes have been completed, we are now in the phase of fleshing out Part 1 of our revamped pilot system, beginning to make them feel more alive both visually and mechanically. Some highlights of these new features that we’re currently implementing include:

• Personalities: Pilots will now have different personality types which shine through while they’re operating a mech, thanks to some all-new mech animations that are based on pilots’ respective personalities.
• Pilot Cams: Instead of a static portrait, pilot cams are now animated, displaying pilots’ reactions to all of the action unfolding on the battlefield (firing a weapon, running, taking a hit, etc.)
• Pilot Health: Pilot fatigue is being replaced by “pilot health,” which will determine how much damage a pilot can take before they become concussed or die, the thresholds for which will be randomized upon pilot generation. This new system will impact gameplay in a myriad of ways–it will highlight the toll of combat on pilots, reduce the duration of combat, space out combat in the overworld, give players alternative methods of dealing with enemy units, and encourage players to pace themselves through resting & resupplying or recruiting new pilots.

New Combat Scenarios

One of the defining aspects of Phantom Brigade is the ability to use the environment to your advantage, whether you’re ducking behind cover or destroying it to expose the enemy–and, let’s admit it, blowing up buildings with giant mechs is just really fun.

However, the indiscriminate destruction of your units’ surroundings can often feel antithetical to the game’s themes of defense and liberation, so we’re developing some new combat scenarios that will give consequences to destruction, tasking players with either demolishing or protecting certain structures on the map. For instance, you may have to:

• Silence radio towers to fulfill event objectives
• Disable alarm guard posts to prevent enemy waves
• Avoid blowing up a fusion reactor

UI Changes & Optimizations

We have a number of quality-of-life UI changes in the works as well, such as a revamped Scenario State UI which aims to make information about objectives and mission progress much clearer to the player while in combat, as seen in the example above. We are also beginning a series of ongoing optimization passes which will increase performance across the board for all players!

All of this is just a taste of what we’ve got cooking, but we hope this sneak peek has you as excited as we are for the future of Phantom Brigade! You can expect these new features, changes, fixes, and more to become available for all players next month (August 2022.) Though our first round of Steam playtests recently ended, the next round is planned to go live soon after the next update releases, so keep an eye out for sign-up announcements via our Discord or our newsletter!

See you on the battlefield, commander.

The post Phantom Brigade Update 20 Preview appeared first on Brace Yourself Games.

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS:

WHOLE NEW WORLD: Overworld overhaul part one is in!
SHOT FOR SHOT: New establishing shots to set the scene.
ENGINE UPGRADE: We upgraded our Unity version.
THE HILLS ARE ALIVE – with new music and SFX!
AND MORE!

Phantom Brigade is in Early Access, which means we are actively updating and adding new content based on our roadmap and your wonderful feedback. As a quick note, Brace Yourself Games will be taking a holiday break starting this week. The next Tactical Tuesday update will still occur as scheduled on January 18th, but may appear lighter as we are taking the time to address bug backlog, and make less visible changes!

See the full patch notes here!

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