One Game 5 idea had a system for troop classes, so I designed some simple game pieces to help us tell everyone apart. Again, none of this is real production art. Just some goofy little sketches to help us wrap our head around what we were playing.

Happy American tax day, everyone!

Last week’s soldiers have been recycled to test out a few different game ideas. Turns out belly numbers are good for all sorts of stuff. Will Game 5 look something like the screen grab below? It’s certainly a strong candidate.

This prototype is currently only playable on Adam’s favorite platform: Adobe Illustrator. It’s amazing how far the text tool and alt + dragging will get you when you group your objects right.

Usually when I’m putting together a prototype, I’ll do some quick-and-dirty game pieces to help get the point across. Here are some placeholder troops I threw together for one Game 5 idea, in order of strength.

Most of our ideas begin as “pen and paper” prototypes, using dice and cards and basic shapes for game pieces. Here’s a screen grab of what they look like even before that. This poorly labelled half spreadsheet, half note vomit might one day be an awesome game.

There are a few more fixes on their way to Outwitters 2.0 (including the much-needed forfeit counter seen above) but it’s safe to say that Game 5 prototyping and playtesting is now our main focus. Early, ugly, barely-working playtesting. Keep an eye on this blog for weekly glimpses of our next project!

We had a few pesky bugs slip into the Outwitters 2.0 App Store update, but we’ve rushed out a fix to clean them up. If you know anyone who experienced these problems, let them know we’ve got it patched!

• Fixed permanent black screen when leaving a game.
• Fixed crash when signing in with a large number of Game Center friends.
• Fixed a few sorting issues in your turn list.

Over the past few months our turn-based strategy game Outwitters has been painstakingly rebuilt, more or less from the ground up. We’re proud to announce that it’s finally available for Android devices, and can even be played cross-platform with our iOS community! You can grab it right now for free, or read on to learn more.

What’s New in 2.0?

• Rebuilt from the ground up to support Android & iOS cross play
• Faster push notifications allow for ‘blitz’ play. Your game will refresh as soon as your opponent sends his turn, instead of having to flip back to the main menu.
• Minor touch-ups and add-ons to UI, such as viewing your friends’ rank before inviting them to a game.
• Faster load times and transitions, with higher frame rates smoothing out some animations

What’s Outwitters?

For the uninitiated, Outwitters is a quirky turn-based strategy game that asks players to navigate the fog of war, vying for a good angle on their opponent’s base. The first player to deal 5 damage to the enemy base wins. Spawning troops, moving around the board, and attacking are all powered by a resource called wits, which you can grab more of by taking control of bonus spaces around the map. It’s easy to learn, but there are plenty of complex tactics to master.

What really sets Outwitters apart from other mobile games are the robust league, season, and matchmaking systems. After a few placement matches you’ll be assigned a league and placed into a division, where you’ll square off against 100 or so worthy opponents for glory. These league rankings are recorded and reshuffled every so often when a new season arrives. It’s basically the perfect game for competitive people who like pink teddy bears.

Things have been a little hectic at the office this week, but we are finally able to announce that Outwitters 2.0 will be hitting Android and iOS devices this week. Thursday March 12th to be exact! That means you Apple folk still have a few more days to warm up before the Androids arrive.

We just couldn’t launch a major update for Outwitters without giving the trailer a face lift. Those jaw-dropping scrambler maneuvers are actually real replays from forum regulars Apple 9763 and Alvendor.

Coming in March: Outwitters 2.0 with faster load times, better frame rates, and cross platform play between iOS and Android! For an email reminder on launch day you can sign up for our mailer, or follow us on facebook, twitter, or this very blog.

This week our Outwitters 2.0 beta testers may have noticed Alex uploading what we like to call release candidate builds. Barring any emergency fixes, this thing is on its way! We’ve set a loose release date window for the first half of March (trying to time the iOS update with the Android launch), and I’m working on cutting together a new trailer today.

While we were capturing footage, we remembered a few pretty awesome replays from our forum regulars. You guys might recognize a couple of your own power plays in the new trailer.