If you’re reading this then presumably you already know that we’ve delayed the worldwide launch of Combat Cards from November until early 2019.

Naturally, that’s not ideal for players who’ve been waiting patiently, so I wanted to use this post to explain the reasons behind the delay. After all, one of the main reasons I write these posts is to ensure that even if you don’t agree with a decision we’ve made, you at least know why we made it.

 

Rushing

The core Combat Cards team is quite small, which has the advantage that it gives the game a singular vision, but restricts how much work we can get done in a given amount of time.

Players from Australia, Canada and the Netherlands will have seen evidence of this in the number of bugs and issues which have crept into the live game over the last few months. This is down to us working as hard as we can to get the game ready for launch, while still adding content to and supporting a live game.

Our apologies to players who have encountered a bug, but we either had to make the choice of temporarily shutting down the game to focus on launch, or try to manage both versions simultaneously. There’s no way to know if choosing the latter was the right decision, but we didn’t want to disappoint existing players who are enjoying the game.

 

Crunching

As a result of the above, the team has been pushing as hard as it can to get everything ready, including working overtime. Just to be clear, no-one told us to do this, but we really wanted the game to be on time and as polished as possible.

However, crunching is bad for two reasons – most importantly, because it burns the team out (and this is a long-term game we plan to support for years – a marathon not a sprint), and because people start making mistakes, causing the bugs I mentioned earlier.

In the end it was our publisher, Flaregames who asked us to slow down and take the time needed to get the game ready for launch, giving us the breathing room to add all the polish listed below. A quick note of thanks to those guys, as being willing to take the time to make the game as great as possible – rather than just rushing it out – is an example of how dedicated Flaregames are to Combat Cards.

 

Christmas(ing)

One question that’s come up is why delay the worldwide launch all the way until early 2019? Surely we can just release it a couple of weeks later than planned?

There are a few reasons for this, but the biggest one is that if we release over the holiday, there’s a big risk that Combat Cards will be lost in the mad rush of new releases which always appear then. Nobody wants that after all the effort we’ve put into the game, so launching in the early months of 2019 gives us the best chance of being noticed by players.

Also, after working hard all year to make the game, then extra-hard to try and get it ready for worldwide launch, the team would obviously like a break over the holidays. Meaning that if we suddenly push thousands of new players into the game, there will be fewer people here to respond to any questions or problems.

 

Polishing

So, the basic reason for the delay is that we simply wanted more time to implement all of the cool polish and improvements we have planned. You see, we’re not just planning to fix a few bugs for worldwide launch – these are the areas we’re working on:

  • All new menu screens – with a sharper style, but which also means the game will run on a much larger range of devices.
  • All new sounds and music – adding a lot more polish and ‘crunch’ to the battles, plus unique battle music for each of the allegiances.
  • More battlefields – adding more variety to the battles, and setting us up for features we plan to add later.
  • New visual effects – making it much clearer when traits and Warlord special rules trigger, plus showing card rarities during battles.
  • Bug fixes and future proofing – we’ve been working to address as many issues as possible and ensure the game is in a good position to run for years.

We’ll preview each of these areas on our Facebook page, so you can see how much work is going into getting the game ready for launch. This isn’t a quick polish, we’re making major improvements to almost every area of the game.

 

Conclusion

Our apologies if you were hoping to play the game in November, but hopefully now you at least know why we delayed the launch. On behalf of the team I want to thank everyone for your patience – hopefully you’ll find the game worth the wait!

If you have any questions or comments on the above, you can get in touch through [email protected] or our Facebook page.

Thanks,
Stu