Past and future 2023

Quite a while into 2023, so time for our 2022 recap and an outlook for the rest of 2023!

This report covers CyberTD, Elemental War, Elemental War 2, Spine, Tri6: Arena and Tri6: Infinite.

Actually I could start this recap the same way as last year mentioning it was our best year so far because it’s true again. We had a very successful Elemental War 2 launch and quite some success on the now cancelled Google Stadia. So successful that Tri6: Infinite on Stadia even got the Best Cloud Game of the year 2022 award by Next Generation Gaming!

Over the course of the year we also released the usual updates for the old games and with CyberTD and Tri6: Arena started two new projects. More on that below.

2023 already started out pretty exciting. We now moved into an office and with David have a first employee helping on the development side of things. I hope we’ll also get our marketing position filled this year.

In 2022 I was at our first convention with Elemental War 2 and this year we will participate in quite a few more. Actually, with GGBavaria we already visited one with a first chance to give CyberTD, our new game, a try.

Project wise we will finish CyberTD this year, finally really start working on Tri6: Arena (concept was done last year, but now we have to realize everything) and launch another update for Elemental War 2 with proper Steam Deck support and a few more fixes and improvements. We will also have at least one new port incoming and are as usual checking out what other platforms we can support (e.g. new cloud platforms now that Stadia is gone).

As we also already teased we’re going to work on VR projects as well this year. First one already got started, but way too early to announce anything.

CyberTD

While finishing Elemental War 2 and waiting for the go from FFF Bavaria to start working on the concept of Tri6: Arena we started development on CyberTD. At the moment it is our main project and coming closer to the finish line every day.

The whole base game is completed and gets currently polished. End of February this year we were at GG Bavaria and got a lot of great feedback. We are still working on improving the game based on that feedback while also working on the last content. We will soon start with multiplayer testing, console ports and performance improvements. And then already the convention season for CyberTD starts.

We will also have a demo at the next Steam Next Fest for you and we still are planning to do some playtest soon, but no time yet to organize it.

Elemental War

As Elemental War is quite old now there wasn’t much done in 2022. But we worked on a Stadia version as well as dedicated versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series to improve graphics quality there, fixed a few more issues and also added proper support for Steam Deck and finally launched Elemental War 1.11 this February.

There will be at least another small patch fixing some graphics glitch, but besides that we’re done with Elemental War now.

Elemental War 2

In 2022 we released our new tower defense game Elemental War 2. It was our biggest launch so far as we released on all platforms at the same time. And that were quite a few platforms with Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4 & 5 as well as Stadia.

There were pretty weird issues on Steam, but as the Steam sales in general get worse with each game for us it wasn’t a big problem on the financial side. In general we released a lot of updates with bugfixes, improvements and new content like the big update in October adding a new endless mode as well as weekly challenges.

We have another update basically ready that will fix a few more minor issues, improve performance and as for Elemental War 2 add proper Steam Deck support.

Besides that we have no plans for more content updates, but as usual we’ll see what opportunities might appear.

Spine

At least in the first half of 2022 Spine got a lot of updates. Those weren’t always really big, but there was a constant flow of updates. In the second half I had not that much time for it anymore due to many deadlines. There are still many things happening at the moment with the new office, first employee, looking for another employee and more, but at least I already found some time again to continue work on Spine.

I can’t promise anything (as usual), but there should be updates coming again soon-ish.

The foundation for the big UI update that is already planned for a few years now was done in 2022 finally. But as it’s an annoying thing I’m not looking forward to do that much it’s something I’m constantly pushing away. Maybe 2023 is the big year though as most hurdles are finally passed.

As usual the database also grew last year and whenever something is missing I’ll try to add it as soon as possible, you just need to tell me.

If you miss mods or have problems, feel free to leave a comment or join our Discord.

Tri6: Arena

Tri6: Arena is the successor to Tri6: Infinite. We have huge plans for it and as the concept development for it was funded by FFF Bavaria last March we have a great concept now.

Now with David in our team and once CyberTD is done we will start on the prototype of Tri6: Arena and check out all the ideas we thought about. These contain for example many improvements for the existing infinite mode, of course the arena mode, online multiplayer and more.

I’m not sure we’ll have to share a lot during 2023 already as it depends on how things go. You can be sure that we will keep you informed in the monthly progress reports, but there probably won’t be screenshots and videos this year. Maybe really at the end of the year, but we’ll keep you informed.

Tri6: Infinite

Tri6: Infinite as Elemental War 1 is quite old now, but due to our time on Stadia we ported it for that platform as well. And that was our best decision so far as we reached so many great people with it and even won the Cloud Game of the Year 2022 award by Next Generation Gaming as Tri6: Infinite was the game that had the biggest impact on them.

We also received a lot of feedback from the Stadia community that we will include in the second entry in the franchise, Tri6: Arena.

Besides the Stadia port we also launched a PlayStation 5 version, an update for the Steam Deck and even released a free DLC with the soundtrack on Steam.

Tri6: Infinite itself is done now from our side, but every feedback you have will at least be considered for Tri6: Arena. And as already mentioned above we’re also looking for more platforms to bring Tri6: Infinite to.