What is Warnament? Developer Interview
There's a new grand strategy in town: quick to learn, incredibly deep, comes with scenario editor
Warnament is a grand strategy game that is as deep as classic games in the genre, but only takes minutes to get into action. You can play out historic scenarios or create your own: take control of a nation on a global map and take it to glory by taking over territories and achieving military, technical, cultural or political advantage.
Warnament is a spiritual successor to Cold Path, another game with similar philosophy, created by a very passionate solo dev Denis Makhortov. But this time, it's bigger, cooler and more epic in every way - yet as simple to dive into. Below is an interview with Denis himself.
If you're into games like that, sign up for developer updates on the website to get a notification once the free demo is out. Or join us on Discord to participate in the development directly!
Meet the Dev: Denis Makhortov
How did you come up with an idea for Cold Path and why does it stand out from other grand strategies?
Most of the games in the genre are either excruciatingly hard to get into or stripped off many interesting features from the former. I wanted to create a more balanced experience while maintaining a high level of diversity of strategies for the players. Online multiplayer was also a key feature for me: I wanted to give the players an opportunity to clash their own political views and hypothesis, try different scenarios - historical or not - see what happens, and then have heated discussions about how it all went out. And of course, they should've been able to do that within dozens of minutes, not dozens of hours.
I'm also a big fan of Age of History series, but the author has apparently stopped supporting the game at some point, and I still had features I felt that game would benefit from, so… like many beginner game developers do, I've decided to make my own dream game. Apparently, I was not the only one who dreamt of it.
How and when did you understand that you're on the right track with Cold Path?
Actually, it started even earlier: before Cold Path, there was a prototype game, without multiplayer and other vital features. I've uploaded it to Google Play and… I'm not entirely sure what it was, but something clicked: players were writing reviews, pointing out bugs and other mistakes. And since I was still in college prep school, with way too much time at my disposal, I've started answering them and building further updates based on their feedback. Soon enough, I've had a robust little community around that game of mine. Today, 3 out of 4 moderators on Warnament's Discord server are fellas that have been way around since that first prototype game. The remaining one is from Cold Path.
What do you think Cold Path (and, subsequently, Warnament) has, that your players find so appealing?
As I can judge from the feedback I'm getting, the most important things are the diversity of gameplay strategies, plus various scenarios (along with the ability to create your own), plus multiplayer. People love arguing about politics and history, so why not let them try their theories in a simulation, which is a video game? What if Switzerland was an aggressive militaristic state? What if Turkey would start taking over Europe during World War II? What if Great Britain would be run by communists? Different political institutions add more dimensions to the gameplay. You can build a theocratic state, focus on science or making money and buying out everyone around you. But every other grand strategy has that. My idea is to allow players to do that in just a couple of clicks or swipes, and within a relatively short game session - so you could try one strategy at lunch break, and go to another one by dinner.
But sticking to historical scenarios is not at all a must. I think it's important for a game like that to have a flexible editor for making your own scenarios - as realistic or fantastic and absurd as you can imagine. Cold Path comes with an editor which is as simple as the game itself - and the players are actively using it to create maps of their own. Naturally, I'm planning to enhance this feature in Warnament.
Why do you think it's so important to make the game deep and fast and easy to learn?
As I've mentioned before, I was in college prep when I started making Cold Path. Naturally, some of the players were relatively the same age. I know that, because some of them wrote that they could play the game during a recess! Later on, I've started receiving feedback from more adult players. You know, those in their thirties, with families and little to no spare time. Not everyone can afford to spend a whole night playing out a party in a grand strategy game. Let alone if those games have a 3-5 hours tutorial just to start doing something. In this case, my main reference is checkers or the game of go.
Let's talk about Warnament now. Why did you decide to switch to a new game? And why is it not called Cold Path 2?
Cold Path was one heck of a ride, but I think it's time to move forward. I literally have a notebook full of ideas on how to improve every aspect of this concept - gameplay mechanics, the code, the graphics, even the servers - that it would only be fair enough to give it a different name.
Besides, even if I tried to implement all those changes to an existing game, it would render all user-generated content obsolete, which I would hate to do. So let's leave Cold Path be - besides, everyone can play and enjoy it for free now (a little spoiler - the PC version of Cold Path will become available soon)!
When do you plan to release Warnament, and on which platforms?
Since I'm using Defold engine, Warnament can be released on pretty much all the major platforms - PC & mobile would be the ones to start with. There are almost no breaking changes upon updating, it has high performance and very flexible, too: currently, there's even an alpha version for HTML5, have you ever imagined being able to play a grand strategy in a browser? I've been using it for development for some time now: it might give you a slow start, but once you learn the ropes, it's really easy to finish a game.
As for when - no date is nailed to the wall yet, I'm very early in development. But if you want to follow the process closely and have a chance to have your hands on the playable version as early as possible, I'd suggest you join Warnament's Discord server.
What are the most important new features that you have in mind?
There will be new types of armies, including fleets. New types of buildings and technologies, naturally. More political regimes and, subsequently, styles of play. The cultural background of countries will be introduced and the population will start playing a more significant role in general. The map interaction will also be reworked. As I've said before, the core concept will stay the same, but it will be taken on a new level. That, of course, includes the editor for creating custom scenarios. Still, I'm very early in development, so feel free to subscribe to the newsletter (to get the updates as soon as they emerge), or go straight to Discord if you want to participate in the development more proactively.
And another thing! Since Warnament will be so much different from Cold Path, I've decided to make the latter completely free of charge. No in-apps, no ads, no strings attached at all - just so you could have a taste of all the awesome things to come!
To get notified about the free demo and grab your copy of Cold Path for PC, join our Discord and sign up for dev updates on warnament.com, we'll let you know as soon as it's time to grab the good stuff!
Look what’s happening - there are Dev Updates released after this interview:
Я из колд паф. Разработчик, удачи тебе!Ты сделаешь лучшую стратегию какой бы они ни была@ Tsar_Alcogolic, он же Пончик
Надеюсь что в этой игре появятся такие функции: масштабной постройки зданий, масштабного сноса зданий и также масштабного найма или роспуска армий, во всех или выбранных в числовом поле провинций.