Here’s a quick and dirty mockup of what a screen mid-round in a Campaign game might look like.

The whole thing will play very much like a board game, with each player (human- or AI-controlled) taking turns each round, deciding where and how to invest their funds in their bases and where to make their offensive move that turn. The choices have direct consequences over how the on-ground battles go, dictating how many bunkers and defensive forces you start with when defending, and how much of a budget you have to work with when attacking/exploring.

Also, the final outcome of each battle will cause players to gain and lose cherished and valuable income-generating bases (mining outposts), eventually ending the game with one player controlling all the available sites on the planet. The events on the ground will finally have meaning!

The lines you see in the image show where and in what proportions each player have chosen to invest their available funds that round. Yellow is for how much they’ve built in their already owned bases, and red is for the attack or expedition they intend to carry out that round. The floating team bars can be dragged around the screen to get a clear view of the situation.

We can hope this becomes as fun to play as we imagine it as we’re busy designing and building it! At any rate, we’re excited to find out ASAP..

Hello everyone, and belated happy new decade!

To the right we’re cranking away at one of the several menus and dialogs needed for the Metagame (aka “Campaign”) mode. In the coming days and weeks, I hope to throw up some more mockups, teasers, and info about this aspect of the project which will tie the whole Cortex Command experience together. In short: it’s a turn-based game which sits on top of the tactical missions (hence the “meta” – i.e. a game about the game) and puts them in a larger context. What happens in the tactical on-surface battles directly affect the orbital metagame, and vice versa.

We have cut away a lot of the feature creep and finally nailed down a feasible scope for this Campaign mode, and I think what we’ve ended up with is going be very fun to play. As always, we’re making it all data-driven, so you crafty guys can make and mod its content for a customized experience.

Having achieved a fairly clear and realistic picture of exactly how it’s all going to work is pretty exciting for us, so I expect productivity on this to really pick up! Stay tuned..