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We have some really exciting news for you all today.
We've been extremely hard at work on Battalion getting the game feeling good at it's most basic level ready for Alpha in May. This goes from fluid ingame movement and solid weapon mechanics all the way to balanced map design for 5v5 Search and Destroy. We've known that even though there's extreme hype for the game that It's important we don't rush our work so that we nail the feel of our game. This isn't just a UE4 shooter, Battalion's editing tools are becoming their own engine which we can update for years to come.
Knowing this, we felt it extremely important that we look for a development partner who would understand our ethos as a growing development studio and understand how we work as developers, which is pretty far from the norm. We would never partner with any publisher that would take our creative freedom. This is why we've decided to partner with our friends at the Square Enix Collective, who some of you may know from our previous release "The Turing Test" which released on Steam, Playstation 4 and Xbox One, February 2016.
This is a deal we've been looking to secure for quite some time after the Kickstarter finished after we were unable to attain some of our higher tier stretch goals. We've spoken to multiple huge publishers and Square Enix Collective were the best fit for our aims and ambitions whilst still allowing us to retain 100% of our creative control over the game.
So what does this mean for Battalion 1944?
Square Enix have access to a massive network to help us publicise Battalion.
FPS games live and die based on their active player base at launch and we plan on making a massive splash with our day one early access release. Square Enix have a plethora of marketing expertise to enable that to happen. However, this means nothing if the game isn't good. This bring us onto the next point:
* More development resources
We can't go into financial specifics, but we're able to apply many more resources into the development of Battalion to create a more polished experience. This is on top of their expertise in their outreach to the gaming community.
* Using the same talent as Call of Duty & Battlefield The Square Enix Collective have a unique partnership with Petrol Advertising who create and manage the marketing campaigns for both the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises. They're now actively working on the Battalion campaign as well. We're really pleased to be able to take advantage of this awesome opportunity for an independent game to take advantage of the same marketing talent given to the biggest games in the world.
We’re really excited to give Battalion this extra boost of support from one of the world's biggest publishers. We decided to go with a publisher early on in the development process when we decided we wanted to put everything we have into Battalion 1944 and make it our sole focus. After having meetings and discussions with virtually all the major publishers in the industry, we decided there was one team we could trust to give us the creative freedom to build Battalion 1944 just as FPS gamers want it. The Square Enix Collective trust us and we trust them, we’ve worked with them before and we know they have Battalion 1944’s interests at the forefront of their work.
GDC 2017 and Forgotten Soldiers LAN feedback
Last week the team were at the 2017 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco to find new development techniques and meet more developers who could help push Battalion 1944 further as a truly competitive FPS.
One of the main take backs is how we can improve on Battalion’s fluidity and performance on lower end systems. Unreal Engine 4 by default is a naturally demanding game engine on your PC, however these tweaks will enable us to squeeze extra FPS out of lower end systems and increase stability at the high end, without sacrificing too much on Battalion 1944’s graphical fidelity. At the end of the day we feel it’s much more important to have a stable and fluid game like the classics than focusing solely on visual prowess.
This year’s GDC event has been one of the most productive and useful for the Bulkhead Interactive team, so we’re looking forward to you guys seeing these performance results during Alpha.
Straight after GDC we decided to demo the game in a closed LAN environment at the Forgotten Soldiers LAN event in Munich, Germany. We did this to get feedback from some of the best CoD2 players the competitive scene has to offer.
The testing session was under NDA, however feedback has been generally positive (accepting of the fact it was pre-alpha). Just from this small amount of focused feedback on the movement/feel etc, We can improve a lot before Alpha to make the experience better for everyone. It wouldn't have been fair or representative to our backers to release the game online in it's current state, it's something we could really only test on lan at this stage with the devs on hand to fix crashes/take notes etc. It was more about checking we're heading in the right direction FOR alpha without the stress/pressure of an online release.
Closed Alpha, May 2017 & Kickstarter Surveys
As we’re in the run up to the official Battalion 1944 Closed Alpha, backers will be receiving their Kickstarter surveys within the next month. We know how anxious you are to get your rewards so we’ll make an official announcement when the surveys are sent. Keep holding on tight until then!
Battalion 1944 Reveal Trailer coming soon…
We’re currently working on our reveal trailer to show you guys our progress on the game since Kickstarter. Within the next few weeks we’ll be releasing a trailer to show you exactly that. Keep your eyes peeled for that next reveal.
That’s it for today’s announcement, we’ll be speaking to you again very soon!
Make sure to follow (now verified!) @Battalion1944 on twitter alongside our developer twitter account @TheBulkhead
Thanks for reading and stay tuned!
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