Together In Battle Preview - Gritty Tactical Potential

I get the feeling the Sinister Design’s "bit of a one-man army" Craig has a deep appreciation and love for two things: turn based tactics, and system based interactions. Last year’s Telepath Tactics Liberated was an absolute gem among a bumper year for the genre, but not one to rest on their laurels, tactical follow up Together In Battle is already planned to hit next month. Feeling a kindred spirit in the love of the genre, when I had the opportunity to check out an early build of the upcoming game... of course I had to say yes.

Together In Battle builds on the foundation laid by the bespoke TTL formula, with the key feature being an overlay of fairly deep procedurality laid on top. Rather than the usual carefully constructed and well balanced collection of roguish heroes, your party is chosen from a pool of generated characters, as if hiring a band of mercenaries. While that isn’t necessarily special in itself, it’s each character’s fully procedural backstory, potential growth and bond building throughout the group that’s the intriguing selling point here.

Pushing the boundaries of procedural game design always piques my curiosity. No Man’s Sky’s seemingly unending universe is the obvious example, but the likes of Unexplored’s dungeon design and Wildermyth’s narrative building blocks give us great indications of the different styles of procedural possibilities still worth exploring outside just “infinite content”. It’s that last example in WIldermyth that TIB is working in similar waters with here - while we already know the tactical layer is solid titanium, it’s the building on character growth and interplay that produces wildly differing experiences from player to player, play through to play through.

The hope here is that the your own ragtag band of procedurally generated party members will feel like their own found family - one that is completely different from your mate’s crew, with their own tensions, friendships and foibles to bear. While the build I played wasn’t quite as procedural as the main game is planning to be, it’s very easy to see how those building blocks can be pulled together to produce something actually unique to your own play through.

The rest of the machinations around the game help to feed into this procedural design. Great tactical battles with more than simply combat options at your disposal are of course key to building a connection with your crew. Choices and discrete events - some deterministic, others procedural - outside of battle provide boosts and obstacles for you to manage, as well as building relationships between each of your party members. Of course, your crew also need to be fed and paid - another wrinkle in how you manage your team.

It’s a winning recipe full of good ingredients. Hopefully it lives up to the promise - something we should know for sure around April 26th this year. Given the great track record for Sinister Designs, my hopes are high.