Future development of Timbertales – Gathering ideas, your feedback is needed!

[Ruffiely]

Hey fellow community,

first of all I have to say sorry for treating Timbertales so neglected in the past. I want to thank you guys for being this loyal to me! I appreciate that very much and I promise improvement in the future, because I think Timbertales is more than worth it and there is a lot of room for improvements available!

Let me tell you a bit why I made this decision and why I come back to Timbertales development. Timbertales was my first and most passionated project I had a successful Kickstarter, but the game took me much longer than expected and in the end I hurried things to much and put in way too much features without polishing them enough. Of course this ended in not the best sales and I wasn't even able to get the development cost back. Then I went to new projects and tried new stuff. Unfortunately without any success.

Nowadays I think Timbertales is and was my best bet because I followed my dream, but hurried it too much. I hope I can fix all the issues even two years later and still make it a success. But I want at least to finish it for myself and my peace of mind. I always think Timbertales is worth it and so I need to do this. Meanwhile a lot of things changed in my workflow, studio etc. So it will be very hard and there is a lot of work todo but I want to this.

This is why we are here. You can wish whatever you would like to see in the game. I try to gather feedback, read through the reviews and create a complete new roadmap. I will also make the game more appealing to desktop / Steam only because it was original intended for cross platform. I also thinking about switching the game engine because Timbertales was achieved with libGDX and I work with Godot 3 in the meantime.

I hope for your contribution and support even if its much required but I need your help to alive as indie game developer and giving Timbertales a second life! :)

Player critics / feedback gathered so far

- Game feels unfinished / unpolished
- Campaign goals feels unbalanced
- General balance feels either too hard or too easy (may be depending on player experience with TBS?)
- Campaign is too short / More story content is wished / vermin campaign never shipped
- Online features were a mistake / Multiplayer not needed not enough players
- Server instabilities
- Price too high (I am not sure if this is still the case?!)
- Boring core gameplay not interesting enough

New Feature / ideas

- New fractions / animals

Battle map mode

A map with lots of territories to conquer which will grant you overall bonuses to your next missions. The goal is to conquer the whole map and destroy your enemies. It is a some kind of game in game features with turns vs an AI.

Best,
Thorben

[Ruffiely]

The first patch on this long road has been released see the changelog here: https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791459405092/announcements/detail/1717498690224730223

Next patch will include some balance and UI changes. I plan to make weekly updates from now on I hope I can follow this plan :) I hope you like the changes so far and I appreciate your feedback here a lot

[Arcadian]

I noticed some minor grammatical errors here and there. It could help to get somebody to proofread the text data.

Something frustrating I noticed about the game is the fact that the player's own troops block each others' path, resulting in bottlenecks. It ends up becoming impossible to pull back troops that are getting too weak, and limits the strategy mostly to deciding who you want to sacrifice and in what order. Maybe allowing troops to retreat past each other, or adding an option for adjacent troops to swap places would open more options.

[Ruffiely]

Thanks for your feedback Joe I will do the proofread within the next week and think about the blocking / swapping.

[Ruffiely]

Another week, another update: https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791459405092/announcements/detail/1718625222215560280

[Andarien]

Going to copy here what I wrote you in Facebook :) It is great that you are working on the game again. It has been years, but I always liked the stype and the idea. Anyway, few more things to fix:

1) The game still sits in the task manager after I close it. And I still have to remove it from there to be able to launch again, otherwise "game is already running" error.

2) I can't switch applications with alt+tab while inside the game, it does not allow that. So to check, for example, facebook, I have to leave the game at all. I recommend to add "fullscreen windowed" mode, it is extremely useful.

3) Resolutions. Why the list is so huge? There are multiple 1280x1020, multiple other copies of resolutions... Why so many clones?

[Andarien]

About other changes. I am sad that you remowed the acorns and collections. Of course they were mostly useless, but it is always fun to gather something, open new units, make new "armies" with different configurations... It makes the game deeper. Now it is like a naked demo. Only one campaign and challenges. Nothing to keep the players stay. Profile pictures was a fun little thing too, now they are gone. I mean, it does fill a bit empty now.
The only hope is your promise to add more content :) but the bugs should be at the first place.

[Andarien]

Two more points:
1) Music is great, but why can't I listen to it while playing? It is only in the menu. In the battle only silence and crawling sounds. Why not add the choice to enable and disable music?
2) when I move a unit, my camera starts to follow it. It is a bit annoying. This auto jumping from unit to unit does not allow to concentrate. Again, why not add a setting about it? Enable camera following or disable it.

[Ruffiely]

Thanks for your Feedback. I was already able to change some things. Lookup the changelog for patch 3: https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791459405092/announcements/detail/2699284862740746093

Make also sure to feed me with more ideas and feedback. I am willing to do more gameplay specific stuff within the next week.

[Ruffiely]

Patch week 4 is in full swing. Today I published an article about the combat system and possible changes: https://rainware-gamedev.org/deep-dive-into-the-combat-system-of-timbertales/

[Ruffiely]

https://youtu.be/WyQIlLJUN5Y Made a dev log video talking about the last 4 patches :)

[Ghorka]

Thanks for you work, after patches i can finish the prologue! :) []