Year of the Snake

Our New Year’s resolution is to stop 2012’ing. From now on, we’re only 2013’ing, or higher.

Our first order of business was to take a look at our analytics and see how the last gameplay changes have settled out. Surprisingly, the balance seems to have improved across the board. Where once there was a heavy first-turn advantage, it’s much closer to 50/50. The special units are even looking more evenly matched. There is one exception, and we’ll be sending a buff their way in the next update.

Really Cool Fan Stuff We Noticed

As a side note, if you haven’t checked out the fan-made Outwitters Sports Network recently, you might want to give it a fresh look. David Lambert the Code Penguin has been busy. You can now watch popular replays from high-level players, or break down replays of your own move by move. It’s honestly better than our in-game replay for people wanting a closer look at their matches.

And while we’re dropping fan links, there’s also the super-cool Map Creator Tool developed by forum vet Harti. You can’t use your maps in-game, but there’s nothing stopping you from printing that bad boy out and playing on a tabletop with pen and paper, like pappy used to do. Fair warning: it’s a beta, so it’s only been tested in Chrome 23, IE9, Chrome on iPad 3, and Safari on iPad 3 (sometimes laggy, cannot load maps).