Greetings, tactics fans! It's been a little while since I pushed a real update, hasn't it? If you were the worrying sort, you might even have started to suspect that I'd stopped working on Together in Battle. But as Cher Horowitz, protagonist of the classic 90s film Clueless might say: as if!

No, friends--after months of relative silence, I come to you with a major update to Together in Battle. There's a whole lot to talk about here and I'm already tempting the carpal tunnel gods as it is, so let's get right into it!

• New unlockable game mode: Multiplayer Arena! Upon reaching the Monkey League Qualifier in the main campaign, the game will unlock a new, built-in play mode called Multiplayer Arena, selectable as a campaign within the New Game menu of the title screen.

• Multiplayer Arena lets you assemble small teams of custom characters, name them, customize their AI, and pit them against each other in small-scale fights with 2 to 4 teams in a brutal free-for-all!
  
  

• All of the maps in Multiplayer Arena are hand-designed and unique to the mode, with symmetrical layouts designed to avoid giving any one team an unfair advantage.

• Each battle can be player-versus-player, player-versus-AI, or AI-versus-AI: you decide.

• At the start of each fight, all characters are auto-leveled to a level of your choosing; you can turn on random item drops or keep characters limited to whatever they bring into the arena.

• The campaign will automatically track how many wins each team has for your convenience!

• Since Multiplayer Arena is treated as a normal campaign by the game, this means you can start different instances of Multiplayer Arena with different teams and different settings, each assigned to a different save slot; then, whenever you feel like playing a skirmish against the computer (or running a tournament with friends, or simply watching the AI battle against itself), you can just load your saved game the same way you would any other campaign!

Pretty cool, eh? But that's only the tip of the proverbial iceberg...

• UI improvement: a new Inventory Quick View mini-window now lives in the Actions Bar in battle! The Inventory Quick View lets you quickly browse, use, equip, drop, and give the selected character's items without ever opening up their full character screen.

  

  For gamepad support, this uses a new, deterministic 2D "grid" framework that allows multi-axis gamepad without depending on error-prone floating point math. (The game now also supports two layers of nested submenus for gamepad UI, a further improvement that was necessary to implement this feature.)

• UI improvement: a new route tracing method for character movement! When you move a character, the game now follows the exact sequence of spaces you traced out onto the battlefield instead of picking a path on its own. You can even backtrack and the game will remember the previous bits of your route, then let you reroute from there. (Note that if you draw a route that exceeds the mover's maximum available steps, the game will throw out your route and generate its own route as before--however, you can simply move the cursor back over the selected character to start over with your own route again.) All of which is to say: the game will no longer ignore your path and route your characters through traps.

  

• UI improvement: less intrusive tooltips. In-battle unit tooltips are now about 20% smaller and have a semi-transparent background, obscuring less of the screen and making it possible to see what's behind them.

  

• fixed: when playing with gamepad, unit tooltips no longer pop up when targeting a unit with an attack or skill (an annoyance that could oftentimes obscure the target from view).

• UI improvement: attack targeting reticles now contain a counterattack indicator to warn you if a target can strike back. If a skill's target is capable of counterattacking your character, a flashing counterattack icon will appear in the bottom-right of the targeting reticle!
  

• UI improvement: instant danger preview. Mousing over (or, in gamepad mode, moving the gamepad cursor over) a character from another army in battle now auto-displays their move-and-attack range for as long as they remain moused over. This danger auto-display can overlay a persistent danger display, allowing you to see two characters' move-and-attack ranges at once (or a character's move-and-attack range alongside the overall zone of danger posed by all enemies).

• UI improvement: if an enemy has been clicked (or the Q key pressed) to display enemy move-and-attack range, those persistent danger tiles now remain onscreen after you click Undo, move one of your units, or attack--these tiles are now automatically updated afterward to reflect any changes to the spaces the enemy (or enemies) can reach.

• UI improvement: item popups from sacks! Whenever a character grabs a sack, the game now immediately pops up a sequence of images right there on the battlefield showing you what was in the sack.

• UI improvement: streamlined the Actions Bar. As you might have noticed in the screenshots above, the terrain inspector button has now been moved off the Actions Bar, as it's not something players need quick access to most of the time during play. (It now lives within the main menu instead.)

  Simultaneously, the Open/Close Door button has been merged with the Use button, as it really only served a distinct function in the extremely niche case that a door had a separate Use trigger on it. (This is something that never actually occurs in the main campaign.) Pressing the Use button now pulls double duty, working both for using switches and opening/closing doors.

• UI improvement: when playing with gamepad, the Actions Bar now remembers the last skill you selected with the current character when you return focus to it. This resets when you select a different character.

• UI improvement: there is now a small delay when mousing over a destructible object before the game displays a unit tooltip for it. This keeps tooltips that are only situationally helpful from obscuring the battlefield unless and until the player signals that they actually intend to inspect something by lingering over it for a moment.

• UI improvement: when playing with gamepad, there is now a significant delay when moving the gamepad selector over a character before the game displays a tooltip for them--and an even longer delay when mousing over an object. This keeps the game from spawning unit tooltips before the camera has caught up to the selector (a phenomenon that would oftentimes obscure important parts of the battlefield from view).

• UI improvement: when pressing the Give button for an item in the Reserves Supplies screen, if there is only a single character currently accessing the reserve supplies, that item is now automatically given to the character instead of making you select that character as the recipient.

• UI improvement: shops now support bulk purchases. When selecting items in the shop that are unlimited in quantity (e.g. bandages, focus pills, mangos, etc.), there is now a special window that lets you specify the number to buy. (This supports buying up to 99 of the item at a time.)
  

• UI improvement: added icons to all of the buttons in the battle menu for better legibility.

• UI improvement: when testing a custom campaign, the main menu quit button now reads "Quit to Editor" instead of "Quit to Title Screen."

• fixed: the positions of the weapon selector buttons in the gamepad menu logic had been switched, resulting in the gamepad inappropriately selecting the "previous weapon" button before the "next weapon" button when moving left from the selected character's skills in the actions menu.

• fixed misaligned gamepad cursor positioning when using the weapon selector buttons in battle.

• fixed: when playing with gamepad, using a healing item in battle would cause a static health bar representing the character's prior health to partially overlay the animated health bar representing their health recovery--and worse, the static bar would remain onscreen after, reflecting an outdated health total.

• fixed: localization for actions bar button tooltips was not working as intended.

• fixed: localized text for actions bar button tooltips could spill over the intended display area.

• fixed: when playing with gamepad, the game would override selection of a main menu button within the first second or so of the intro cinematic being over, forcing the player to click a second time.

• fixed: after concluding dialogue mid-battle with one of multiple adjacent talk options, the "Talk to Whom?" text overlay would reappear onscreen.

• fixed: when playing with gamepad, the Objectives reminder window would remain onscreen if the player attempted to close it with the B button.

• fixed a few unintended behaviors with the Objectives reminder window if playing with gamepad.

• fixed: when playing with gamepad, the gamepad cursor could be misaligned when moving over the day log button within a calendar cell.

• fixed: when playing with gamepad, the glossary would not gain gamepad focus after attempting to open the Glossary within battles.

• fixed: when playing with gamepad, the gamepad cursor could be misaligned when moving over main menu buttons within a cutscene.

• UI improvement in version 1.1a: the Give button now works within the character subwindow of the Reserve Supplies screen: when Give is clicked in this context, it automatically stores the item, finds the new item button housing it above, selects it, and then enters Give mode.

• in version 1.1d: pop-up text telling you an item can't be used, equipped, unequipped, given, or dropped in certain contexts are now hooked up to localization.

• balance fix: the player is now limited to hiring out 5-6 characters per day at the docks. This means that the docks are still fully effective at the start of the game, but no longer scale with the size of the player's roster. It is now necessary to take on riskier jobs later in the game in order to maintain the same level of payout outside the arena.

• balance fix: doubled the rate at which caravan guard job pay increases with total days passed in the campaign.

• balance fix: nearly doubled the rate at which cave exploration job pay increases with total days passed in the campaign.

• improved the visual effect for splashing into water (there is now a ring of white foam when a unit impacts the water's surface).
  

• replaced sphere colliders on walls and caravan wagons with box colliders that better fit their shape.

• The engine now supports shops within battles and exploration scenes. (This is not yet used in the main campaign, but is now an option for custom campaigns.)

• The engine now supports games of Psy Clash within battles and exploration scenes. (This is not yet used in the main campaign, but is now an option for custom campaigns.)

• performance improvement: refactored some extremely old code for better performance when altering various properties of a unit's game object.

• fixed: visiting the recruiter with 1 time point left, then immediately leaving would result in the player returning to town with a full 2 time points to spend.

• fixed: certain arena conditions that generated a unique named opponent would tie the unique opponent's level and class to that of the team's generic team leader, but if the team leader was both promoted and of a different species than the unique opponent, the game would pick a new class for the opponent without accounting for the fact that the invalid class was a promoted class, resulting in the unique opponent spawning 20 levels beneath their intended level in an unpromoted class.

• fixed: it wasn't possible to add triggers to a proc gen character.

• fixed: the image for the Void Cloak was not appearing due to a formatting error.

• fixed: the game could throw a null error attempting to use the DamageChar script action on a character not present on the battlefield.

• fixed: the game could unpause inappropriately after closing the reserve supplies screen in battle if other screens (such as the dialogue menu) remained open.

• fixed: in battle, closing the character detail screen would unpause the game even if other menus (such as the reserve supplies screen) remained open.

• fixed incorrect timing of popup text when looting a drop of multiple Psy Clash cards.

• fixed: the localization file was missing a localization for the Locked passability type.

• fixed in version 1.1a: sometime prior to the last 5 months, certain types of dialogue were somehow deleted from the game's master copy of PersistentDialogue.xml without me noticing. This caused certain conversations (such as gamblers asking you if you want them to gamble money for you; characters reacting to other characters' cooking; characters reacting to their own dismissal; or characters learning to Twirl) not to load anymore. Luckily, I was able to recover all of these from a backup dating back to 2024!

• fixed in version 1.1b: Nihal Agarwal's dialogue would no longer accept clicks upon returning to the shop and receiving his congratulations for defeating the steel bandits.

• fixed in version 1.1b: the game had begun clearing the player's reserve supplies upon opening the reserve supplies screen in battle.

• fixed in version 1.1b: under the new path-tracing code, a range error could occur when pathing a flying character through a trap.

• fixed in version 1.1c: it was possible to unlock Multiplayer Arena but still not see it in the New Game menu's campaign list afterwards.

• fixed in version 1.1c: the game could initiate the turn a second time after a victory bark delivered when an enemy unit burned to death in an AI-controlled turn.

• fixed in version 1.1c: the game could throw a null error if a unique character delivered a death bark when burning to death.

• fixed in version 1.1c: if a unique character reached 0 health from Burning applied by another unique character, the defeated character's defeat bark would be overriden by the victor's victory bark.

• fixed in version 1.1c: Multiplayer Arena had an outdated campaign description.

• fixed in version 1.1c: some of the text in the main menu screen for Multiplayer Arena was difficult to read against the background.

• fixed in version 1.1d: certain properties were not getting carried over when the game cloned a dialogue branch, which could sometimes lead to the input text field not appearing or dialogue throwing a null error.

• fixed in version 1.1d: it was possible to give personal items in battle or in the reserve supplies screen.

• fixed in version 1.1d: it was possible to give items in the reserve supplies screen if the giver was Enthralled.

• fixed in version 1.1d: when setting tile phase flags, the game set isVoid to true for chasm tiles, but did not set isSolid to false.

• There is now a new, free, downloadable mini-campaign for you to play: Emma's Dream! While I could talk about it here, you can also just read the very next bullet point below to see what's so cool about it...

• The Together in Battle engine now supports a brand-new "Free Movement" exploration mode! If you've played the original Telepath RPG titles[sinisterdesign.net] (or traditional JRPGs like Chrono Trigger or The Secret of Mana), this mode will feel very familiar. In this mode, you assign a character to the player: they can now be moved directly in real-time, freed from the grid, using WASD or the arrow keys (or, if using a gamepad, the left joystick) and the game camera will follow them.

  Unlike in the older Telepath titles (e.g. Telepath RPG Chapter 2 or Telepath RPG: Servants of God), free movement mode in the Together In Battle engine supports stairs, doors, bridges, and 3D terrain with differing elevations. It also supports new tricks like dropping from high ground down to low ground, walking into pushable objects and characters to shove them, unlocking doors, swimming in water or lava, status effects, and dropping down bottomless pits!

  The character can interact with adjacent characters and triggerable objects using Space Bar (or the A button if using a gamepad); if not directly in front of something interactable, this button will cause the character to jump. This same button will also advance single-reply dialogue branches. While swimming, facing an empty space of dry land of the correct elevation and pressing the interaction button will cause the character to automatically hop back onto dry land.

  Status effects step in real-time when in Free Movement mode: Burning and Poisoned deal damage over time, Stunned and Frozen temporarily prevent the character from moving, Move Bonus and Slowed temporarily impact the character's movement speed, and Levitating and Heavy affect whether the character can ignore water, lava, and chasms. Environmental damage will also step in real time, with characters gradually taking drowning damage while swimming in water (or burning while submerged in lava).

  Green "exit tiles" let the player transition between scenes; if the destination scene also has a Free Movement condition, these tiles can automatically reposition the character to specific coordinates and facing a specific direction on the destination map, representing the area they entered the map from.

  You can save the game at will in Free Movement mode! Just hit the Escape key (or the Start button on your gamepad) to call up the main menu.

  If the player's controlled character dies (as from a status effect or trap damage), the game immediately triggers a defeat state and will either auto-reload the last save or transition to a new scene (if there's a defeat scene defined).

  Although free movement mode is not currently used in the main Together in Battle campaign, it is used in the free downloadable mini-campaign Emma's Dream! It is also freely available for you to use in your own custom campaigns as of right now: simply set the new Free Movement condition to true in a battle to turn it on, then specify the character you want as the free mover (or else specify an army and let the game pick the free mover for you).

• the campaign editor now displays scenes as type (Exploration) instead of type (Battle) if they have a Free Movement condition among their starting map conditions. This makes it easy to keep track of which scenes are which.

• new unit triggers for objects: Chest and Chest Locked. These cause the affected object to behave like a traditional JRPG treasure chest when in Free Movement exploration mode!

  Chest Locked allows the chest to be opened with a key or--if the character has lockpick mastery--a lockpick, whereas Chest allows the chest to be opened freely. Items from the object's inventory then go directly into the opening character's inventory, with any excess items going directly to the reserve supplies: no item sack required. Moreover, the chest's state is then automatically saved, meaning that it will already be open and empty if the player returns to the scene later.

  (Note that this trigger will work on any destructible object, not just chests, so feel free to hide items wherever you want with it!)

• new unit tag for characters: Wander. In Free Movement mode, this gives the tagged character a 2-in-3 chance of moving one step in a random direction with every "tick" (by default, every 3 seconds), similar to NPCs from classic JRPGs.

• in Free Movement mode, the Path and Patrol unit tags now cause NPCs to move in a sequence in real time. Every tick, if the tagged character isn't already moving, they'll move to the next area in their sequence. These tags take precedence over Wander (if a character has both behaviors, they'll revert to using Wander after Path and/or Patrol are removed).

• in Free Movement mode, the Guard tag now causes the tagged NPC to move until adjacent to the target unit with each tick.

• new unit tag for characters, usable only in Free Movement mode: MoveTime. This sets the number of seconds between "ticks" for the tagged NPC. (Characters with smaller delays between ticks will move more frequently.)

• new unit tag for characters: MoveSpeed. This affects how quickly a character moves from space to space, overriding global movement speed settings. Although this tag functions outside of Free Movement mode, its intended use is for impacting real-time NPC movement speed.

• new unit trigger, usable only in Free Movement mode: Contact. This runs a script when the free-moving character makes physical contact with the tagged unit. This can be used to do things like display a message, initiate a battle, or damage the character when they touch a character or object. (Note that this only works for characters and impassable objects: for objects the character can freely walk onto like fire, traps, floor buttons, or rugs, the correct trigger to use is still Pressure!)

• new map editor feature: Draw Walls Mode! There is now a checkbox within the new object window that turns on "Draw Walls Mode." When turned on, the game filters out non-wall objects from the menu: select one to go back to the map, at which point you can freely drag a rectangle onto the map. When the mouse button is released, the outer edges of that rectangle will be auto-filled with walls of the chosen type, all oriented correctly and meeting each other with the correct pieces at all four corners. In this way, you can now create buildings and interior structures much more quickly and easily!

• approximately doubled maximum zoom-out in the map editor.

• a major quality-of-life feature has been added in multiple editors: support for tapping the Enter key to confirm things! Throughout the map editor and cutscene editor, just about any menu that has a Confirm button can now be confirmed with a tap of the Enter key (instead of having to click the Confirm button with the mouse each time).

  Likewise, within the dialogue editor, the Enter key can now be used to confirm newly created dialogue, scripts, actions, replies, and dialogue branches (instead of having to click the Confirm button with the mouse each time).

  If predicted results are onscreen for a new action or reply type for a text input field, hitting the Enter key will now automatically select the first predicted result displayed. All of the above speeds up the process of creating maps, scripts, dialogue trees, and cutscenes considerably.

• another quality-of-life feature: in the dialogue editor, each dialogue's trigger is now displayed in medium gray below its Conversation ID.

• another quality-of-life feature: in the dialogue editor, each dialogue branch's name (if one has been assigned) is now prominently displayed just to the right of its branch number. This makes it much quicker and easier to keep track of what branches lead where within branching dialogue trees.

• another quality-of-life feature: in the dialogue editor, branch name and speaker name are now displayed in different colors from dialogue text, making everything much more readable at a glance.

  

• and another quality-of-life feature: within the dialogue editor, mousing over a dialogue branch now pops up a tooltip providing an instant preview of that branch's replies and telling you how many script actions live on that branch.

• and another quality-of-life feature: the dialogue editor now supports cloning whole dialogue trees and scripts, as well as cloning individual actions and replies within any given dialogue branch, with just a single click. (The branches themselves can be cloned, too, of course, but that was already supported before the update.)

• yet another quality-of-life feature: within the dialogue editor, pressing Shift and Enter while writing a branch's dialogue text now automatically enters the special character for a new line (-NL-) instead of creating a line break. This avoids the issue of illegal line breaks ending up in the saved XML data.

• new script action: Bookmark. This sets a dialogue branch for the game to automatically go to if the current dialogue is re-triggered. This makes it much, much easier to set up a character to say different things when the character talks to them again, and to save the state of the dialogue if the player makes a branching choice. (For example: in dialogue where a character tells you to go run an errand, you can use Bookmark to have the game auto-jump to a branch where the character checks to see if you completed the errand if you talk to them again.)

• new optional parameter added to the Recruit and RecruitByName script actions: Join Army. In battle, if Join Army is set to an army number, then the recruited character will be automatically swapped to the chosen army (and swap army colors to match) without the need to call SetStat separately.

• in the map editor, the procedural character window now supports specifying skin and hair palettes for the character; it now contains a continuously updating sprite preview to show you what the resulting sprite will look like.

• new unit tag for objects: NeedsKeyType. One parameter: Key ID. If used, this tag requires that any key a character uses to try to unlock the object contain the Key ID within its own loadID. (For example, suppose the Key ID is "Gold": keys with loadIDs like "Key Gold" and "Key Ring Gold" will both unlock it, but the normal "Key" and "Key Ring" items won't, since they don't contain the word "Gold"!)

• new items that come by default with new custom campaigns: Gold Key and Skeleton Key.

  

• new unit trigger: Pressure Once. This is a normal Pressure trigger, except that the trigger is removed from the object once it's been activated. (This is the Pressure equivalent to Use Once; useful for floor buttons or pressure plates that you want to activate only one time!)

• new unit tag for objects: Persistent. This causes the current state of the tagged object to carry over if the player exits the scene and returns later (just as it now does with looted chests using the Chest and Chest Locked triggers).

• new sound effects added: Sword Draw, Steam, Miasma Pool, and Chest Open.

• new sound loop added: Swim.

• new 3D Particle effects added: Miasma, MiasmaSmall, Sparkle Heal, LavaSwim, and SwimRing. (These are used with the SpawnParticles script action.)

• new skill added: Ooze! Intended primarily for use as an on-death attack, Ooze creates a Miasma Pool on the user's space.

• new animated destructible object added: Miasma Pool. Characters who walk into a Miasma Pool suffer 9 Shadow damage, have a chance to gain the Slowed status effect, and suffer decreased dodge and decreased physical defenses while they remain on the space.

  

• further new destructible objects added: Sign, Sign Small, and Message Board, each with multiple variants.

• new text sprites added that can be used in dialogue and custom menu buttons: Restart, Settings, and Surrender.

• the CardGame script action is no longer limited to cutscenes!

• the ShowShop script action is no longer limited to cutscenes! (The ReturnToShop and AddStock script actions now work outside of cutscenes as well.)

• shops can now be created, browsed, and edited within the map editor, not just the cutscene editor.

• the shops window within the cutscene and map editors now has Delete and Clone buttons for each shop, making it much easier to create and manage shop variants.

• the shop editing UI now supports multiple pages worth of stock for any given shop.

• in the shop editor, each instance of stock within a shop now has a Clone button to let you quickly duplicate (and, if desired, edit) it.

• renamed scenes no longer spawn clones. When a map is renamed in the map editor, the file bearing the old name is now automatically deleted; when a cutscene is renamed in the cutscene editor, the file bearing the old name is now automatically deleted.

• when loading an existing map within the map editor, the editor's camera now automatically pans to the center of the newly loaded map.

• the map editor now supports drawing exit areas directly onto the map for scenes with Free Movement and Exploration Mode.

• new script action: SetExitArea. Creates a new ExitArea--or, if an existing ExitArea was named, alters its properties. Parameters: exit name, loads scene, top Y, bottom Y, left X, right X, spawn facing (optional), spawn Y (optional), and spawn X (optional). This lets exits change position or lead to different locations depending on changes in the game state.

• new script action: RemoveExitArea. Removes an ExitArea from the map. One parameter: exit name.

• the NewScene script action now has three new, optional parameters: Spawn Y, Spawn X, and Spawn Direction. For Free Movement maps, these affect where on the map the free mover spawns and what direction they'll be facing when they do.

• the NewScene reply type now has the same new, optional parameters as the NewScene script action.

• fixed some issues with bridge placement over hazard tiles in the map editor.

• bridges placed over hazard tiles in the map editor are now automatically placed not just 1 level above the hazard, but at the elevation of the lowest adjacent non-hazard tile above the hazard's own elevation. (So if, for example, a 1-tile river is flanked by two cliffs at elevation 4, placing a bridge over the water will cause it to come in at elevation 4 so that the bridge is even with the cliffs.) Only if there are no adjacent tiles at an elevation above the hazard will the bridge placement default to 1 elevation above the hazard.

• bridges placed in the map editor are now automatically generated with an appropriate Elev tag to preserve the correct elevation when the map is reloaded later.

• new unit property added: lootedSound. Defines the sound they make when they're looted (currently, by way of the Chest and Chest Locked triggers).

• the size of sphere colliders for battlefield units can now be defined on a case-by-case basis for each unit type in PremadeUnits.xml using the new colliderSize attribute. (By default, the colliderSize for a unit is 0.25). Spike traps, iron jaw traps, and snare traps now have a smaller collider size than other objects. This matters primarily for Free Movement mode, but will affect things outside of it as well.

• added generic bronze weapons to the default selection of items available in custom campaigns.

• new custom campaigns now come with versions of the Telepath Tactics Liberated cast who've had their stats adjusted to better harmonize with balance changes present in Together In Battle; they've also been assigned skin and hair palettes for their sprites to align with their portraits. Many of these characters have also been de-leveled to level 1 for more flexible use at the start of a campaign.

• fixed: in the dialogue and script editor, swapping the positions of actions within a script could produce a range error if either action lacked parameters.

• fixed: in the map editor, certain menus (most notably ones checking if you want to save the map) could easily get obscured by unit tooltips.

• fixed: editing a script's name within the dialogue editor was not working properly due to the game looking for a variable in the wrong spot.

• fixed: clicking the Add New Branch button in a dialogue tree could sometimes produce a range error if the new branch had a larger branch number than there were dialogue trees in the scene.

• fixed: in-game documentation for the ShakeScreen script action listed the parameters in the wrong order.

• fixed: in the cutscene editor's background window, tooltips for the Confirm and Cancel buttons were inappropriately layered beneath the bottom row of background graphic previews.

• fixed in version 1.1a: the Key Gold and Key Skeleton item graphics were missing from AssetNames.xml.

• fixed in version 1.1c: with the right timing and the use of sprinting, it was possible to jump on top of destructible objects intended to be impassable in free movement mode.

Annnnnnnnnd that's the end of the list!

Depending on how folks like all the new campaign creator features, I'm considering running another custom campaign contest (I really want to see what creative inventions folks produce using all of these new toys!)
Simultaneously, I am now engaged in quiet machinations for the next Sinister Design game. Can I tell you what that game is? No. Do I know what it is myself? Also no. (I'm currently deciding between about 4 different game ideas, each in varying stages of fleshed-outedness. Really.)

I will say more when the time is right; but until then, please do follow me on Discord[discord.gg], Youtube, and all the other places[sinisterdesign.net]--you can bet I'll be posting when it's time to announce!

In the meantime, I want to hear from you! What do you think of these changes to Together in Battle? Do you like the thought of a full game structured more like Emma's Dream? Please do sound off: I read every comment, and I take my players' opinions seriously!

All right, gang: that's all for this update. Until next time!

Tactically yours,

Craig