As I work on my 3rd Turn-Based Tactical game, I’m sharing my insights into how fundamental design choices affect the gameplay, and sprinkle it with a couple of specific hints how to solve some of the more common design problems.

1. Turn based tactical design
fundamentals
Kacper Szymczak

2. ABOUT ME
● Techland -> CreativeForge -> Artificer
● 16 years of design experience
● 8 years of turn-based tacticals
● Hard West, Phantom Doctrine, and now something new!

3. ARTIFICER is HIRING!
● Measure twice, cut once
● The best studio for ambitious creatives
● Without any personal sacrifices
● Always hiring! -- jobs@artificer.com

4. WHAT I MEAN BY TURN BASED TACTICAL
● Turn order
● Multiple characters
● Spatial positioning
● Primarily about combat

5. KNOW THE KEY REFERENCES

6. Xcom 2

7. Jagged Alliance 2

8. Into the Breach

9. Battle Brothers

10. Gears Tactics

11. Valkyria Chronicles

12. Mutant: Year Zero

13. Invisible Inc.

14. 12 TACTICAL DESIGN FUNDAMENTALS
AND TIPS

15. 1. SQUARE GRID FOR SHOOTING, HEX FOR MELEE

16. ● Good for blocky buildings,
interiors
● Not so good for irregularly-shaped
environment
Square grid

17. ● Sucks for urban environment
Hex grid
● Good for natural environment or
big scale yuck

18. Square grid adjacency sucks for melee
For melee combat, adjacency
is important, and square grid
lacks convenience;
The distance between
adjacent side-by-side tiles is
different than
adjacent slanting tiles.
That means for example that
your animations need to work
for both distances,
or you may need to disallow
slanting melee attacks.

19. Hex grid adjacency great for melee
In Hex grid, it’s the same
distance in all directions.

20. 2. USE A 2AP SYSTEM
(UNLESS YOU’RE MAKING A COMPLEX SIMULATION)
● Simple!
● No math to do
● Don’t have to memorize AP costs
● Never left with a remaining handful of useless APs
...but: unfit for complex simulations (Jagged Alliance)

21. 3. USE A SIMPLE TURN SYSTEM
(MOVE ALL YOUR UNITS IN YOUR TURN)
● It’s simple!
● Little interruption
...but: sluggish with lots of units

22. ● Unaffected by scale
● Harder to plan, synergize abilities (enemy interruptions)
● Players tend to focus on the next big threat on timeline
● Gameplay tends to be more reactive than proactive
...for big battles, use timeline instead
you you you
enemy enemy enemy

23. 4. MAKE COVER READABLE
● Make it readable at a glance
● Keep it blocky
● Nature enviro sucks for this
bad good

24. 5. DON’T KEEP THE PLAYER WAITING
● Let the player execute orders fast, fast, fast (shave off delays, animation time)
● Implement simultaneous orders (switch between units while orders are
executed)
● Implement fast forward in enemy turn (MYZ)
● Fewer units in enemy turn (or use timeline) (reinforcements can help)

25. Full cover is better, so players
will use full cover and ignore
half cover.
Inspect this screenshot: I’ve
marked the only tiles that the
player will find worth
considering, because they
provide full cover.
Level designers who are new
to the genre tend to sprinkle
the levels with half covers like
they would for a shooter
game.
But in cover-based tacticals,
half covers are mostly
irrelevant. Treat your half
covers as decor.
6. DON'T OVERDO HALF COVER
irrelevant
cover =
decor

26. 7. END UNIT TURN AFTER ATTACK
● Moving after attack enables hit and run
● Hit and run is best countered by overwatch
● Both hit and run and overwatch are defensive plays
● Defensive strategies slow the game down

27. 8. GET YOUR SCALE RIGHT
● Fit game into the screen
● Adjust attack ranges to have shooter AND target on the screen
● Fit arenas/chokepoints on the screen

28. 9. DESIGN THE SAFE SPOTS
● Create those with 3 walls
● Very important for support abilities (players need to feel safe to use utilities)
● They allow you to lead the player through the level
3 full covers =
safe spot

29. 10. CONTROL YOUR RNG
TURN-BASED TACTICAL = RISK MANAGEMENT
● Random chance doesn’t mean that ANYTHING can happen
● Make risk manageable
● It’s OK for a flimsy plan to fail (30% chance miss feels okay)
● It’s not OK for a great plan to fail miserably (90% chance miss feels wrong)

30. 11. GET RID OF FLOOR SWITCHING
DO YOU REALLY NEED ELEVATION?
● No
● You need visual verticality instead
● Use area bonuses to get the same gameplay result without the UX burden

31. 12. ABILITIES ARE KING
Don’t cut corners or save resources on abilities!

32. End.
(Hiring designers! jobs@artificer.com)
Questions?