Frozen Cortex - Frozen Synapse football

[Infinitron]

Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=130862114




https://af.gog.com/game/frozen_cortex?as=1649904300

Spoiler

Wait, a football game?

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/15/frozen-endzone-is-the-frozen-follow-up-to-frozen-synapse/

 

[Burning Bridges]

What is this a flipper/ american football game with shitty music?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

 

[tuluse]

I know most people around here don't care for/actively dislike sports, but as a fan of football and especially the strategy behind it, this game has the potential to be a wet dream.

 

[Infinitron]

I know most people around here don't care for/actively dislike sports, but as a fan of football and especially the strategy behind it, this game has the potential to be a wet dream.

42 pages: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/codex-blood-bowlantime.78038/

 

[tuluse]

Blood Bowl has very little in common with actual football.

 

[Mraston]

The subject matter turns me off a little but I love Frozen Synapse enough that I'm excited.

 

[OSK]

I like football. I also like Frozen Synapse. But I don't know how I feel about this game.

 

[Infinitron]

Preview: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/19/frozen-endzone-preview/

Frozen Endzone is a turn-based futuresports game from the creators of asynchronous strategy game Frozen Synapse. I went to see it last week. I drove there in a car and everything. I returned with the following words and thoughts.

I was anxious, worried, scared: this I will admit. Me, a 5’6″, nebbish man of words and screens whose strongest-ever investment in sport was playing badminton once a week for a year, on my way to see a game ostensibly about American Football? Out of my depth, surely. I read a Wikipedia page about American football before I set off to visit Frozen Synapse, and now Frozen Endzone, developers Mode 7 in their Oxfordshire studio, but it only made me more confused.

Turns out I needn’t have worried. Frozen Endzone is sports in theme only – in practice it’s turn-based strategy, and a natural heir to the men vs men tactical gunplay of Frozen Synapse despite its complete lack of metal tubes which go bangbangbang.

The main thing to know, be you sportsfan or be you strategyfan, is that Frendzone (to address the elephant in the room) is a game in which two squads of robots attempt to outwit each other. In a way, it’s like a turn-based capture the flag. In another way, it really isn’t.

A confession: I distorted the truth a little earlier. I do know a small amount about sports after all, which is what enables me to make the following analogy. Frozen Endzone can be thought of as a football (proper football, I mean, not that convoluted stuff with the shoulderpads and whatnot) penalty kick on a grand scale. As in it’s a game of guesswork, bluffing and risk-taking, as one side tries to predict where the other will ‘attack’ from. The defending team are essentially the goalkeeper, diving in the direction they reckon the ball will come from – problem being that said ball can be passed around a small team of robots, who can use on-pitch corridors and mazes created by the randomly-generated terrain to come up with an unpredictable route. Fortunately the defenders can similarly spread their robots around the place, blocking off likely routes.

If an attacking player is blocked, we’re shown a flashy, hand-modelled animation of tackling or tripping, but essentially it’s the equivalent of a Frozen Synapse or XCOM unit getting killed. If, on the other hand, whichever player has the ball can make their way over to the opposing end of the field – the titular Endzone – without being impeded, they score. The teams then swap sides, so defenders are attacking, attackers are defending and all’s fair in love and war.

If that’s all sounding complicated, as though it requires procedures and special moves and working out which button passes and which button tackles, fear not. All you really do is decide which player to send where and when, with the game performing relevant actions for you as and when the robots encounter each other. Also, each match is incredibly quick, all done and dusted within five to ten minutes (unless you’re playing an asynchronous game against someone who takes hours between turns, anyway). It appears to be a pure challenge of wits, requiring no specialist knowledge of either sports or multiplayer strategy, and with a control system and UI even more minimalist than Frozen Synapse’s.

You don’t even need pixel-perfection in terms of where your players are, where you order them to and where your throw the ball to – it’s more about selecting general areas for the action to take place. The interface, meanwhile, is very stripped down compared to Frozen Synapse’s slightly fussy affair – basically you’re just clicking and dragging to move players, although you can set a delay timer if you want a guy to wait a while before sprinting somewhere. “It’s kind of like the greatest hits of the FS UI,” thinks Mode 7′s Ian Hardingham.

The Blood Bowl comparisons raised themselves immediately both to my mind and in the online reception when Frendzone was unveiled last Friday, but while they have being fantasy sports-themed turn-based strategy games in common, the comparison basically ends there. “Unlike Blood Bowl where rules are external to gameplay,” explains Hardingham to me, “this is all about the decisions you make.” So no dice rolls or stat-boosts here – it’s strictly whether you’ve sent your players on sensible routes, and whether or not the defending player manages to use a combination of logic and luck to second-guess you. “We want the rules to be very clear straight away, but working out strategies is the complicated bit.”

There are three distinct phases to the game, although apparently the division is an organic one based on how people will likely play more than it is a mandated one. But we are looking at a six-turn – i.e. three per player – game. Think of it as like the fixed time of a football match, I suppose. In the first phase, you’re basically assessing the field and deciding how you want to play this match. As mentioned, the field is randomly generated, in terms of the huge blocks which form pathways and obstacles, so in theory you can’t go into a new match with a set idea of what your play will be. Your decision could be between bunching all your players together to try and brute force charge in one direction, or spreading your robo-blokes out across the field in the hope that your opponent can’t mark everyone, or some vastly more fiendish hybrid approach.

Clearly, the rival team will be doing similar. Explains Hardingham, “it’s a tiny bit like the setup phase in an advanced boardgame, but you’re competing with opponent to setup the board in a certain way.”

So you know where you wanna go. Now you’ve just got to get the ball there safely. Phase two, then, hangs around passing the ball, which isn’t any more complicated than aiming and throwing, but you are gambling on where your opponent’s robots are going to end up. You’re throwing the ball to be where you’ve ordered another one of your players to be, rather than where they begin the turn at, but if their journey to that point is interrupted by one of the opposing players, that pass isn’t going to work out. While the first turn can last as long as the attacking player likes, in terms of where he sends his team to, this second one is simply the length of the pass.

In the third and final phase, it’s the charge to the Endzone. Again, this is all about forcing your opponent to guess where you’re coming from. If you outfox them, you score a touchdown. If their gambit pays off, you don’t. It’s a micro-drama rather than simply cold strategy, and in theory it’s far richer in possible permutations than Frozen Synapse was. “You can do really stupid stuff and it can work,” reckons Hardingham. “In FZ the stupid stuff wouldn’t work.”

Importantly, failing to score a touchdown doesn’t necessarily mean that the attacking player loses the game, as there are also Field Goals on the pitch. Run a ball-holding player through one of these yellow squares during one of your turns and you’ll bag three points (as opposed to the endzone’s seven), Bag a couple of field goals and you’re doing OK even if you don’t get to the end. However, when the sides switch the other player knows exactly what he or she needs to beat your score. The most dramatic victories will grab all the field goals, the endzone and the (red) bonus zones which reward you with additional points if you do make it to the Endzone. So, while it’s a quick and simple game, compared to both sports games and strategy games in general, there’s an awful lot of potential combinations and scenarios which will prevent it from simply repeating itself – especially given the random maps which could really skew things one way or another. “That may mean there are maps where it’s hard for defence to stop a touchdown, but because you’ll swap at the end both players have to deal with that,” explains Hardingham.

Something you may have spotted in the trailer and screenshots is that this isn’t, as was its predecessor, a game about tiny silhouette-blokes in an all-blue world. Despite sharing an engine – Mode 7′s long-used Torque, which they remain huge proponents of – Frendzone has exactly 314% more graphics than Synapse. They wanted 316%, but it would have broken space and time. Alright, it’s not Crysis but it looks flashy and crunchy and eye-catching. Particularly standing out the animations, which are the work of an ex-SCEE dev hired especially for the purpose. Hand-crafted, so to speak, rather than the result of mo-cap, the key to why they look so is not solely that an expert made them, but also because of Frendzone’s nature.

It’s turn-based, and by the end of each player’s turn it knows what the outcome is going to be before it has to show it to the player. This affords it the freedom to show you something more dramatic, without actually altering the events. So, whereas in, say, a Madden or FIFA game, a blocked or tackled player would have to grind to a sudden halt and perform a quick animation to show it, here your guys can be made to slow down or side-step in advance, or a player about to pass to another can visibly turn his head to look at him before he throws the ball. In other words, in theory, watching a turn play out can look more like real-life sports than the more – ironically – robotic behaviour of real-time sports games. Or, at least, a more filmic interpretation of real sports – apparently, everything we’ve seen in the trailer is entirely stuff which can happen in game.

As for the robots themselves, while they might look interchangeable one thing Mode 7 are looking at is giving them player-editable faces. Choose your own expression, pattern or naughty genital-esque scribble and it’ll appear on the front of a player’s helmet, as well as appearing in a rather nifty projected light-mask when looked at side-on. The team are looking at ways to keep inevitable naughtiness away from delicate eyes, but all that stuff is very much TBC right now.

You might have noticed that I’ve talked only about this as a multiplayer game – but that’s because that’s all there is on show for now, rather than because singleplayer isn’t in there. There are plans for a full solo campaign, which will potentially hang around the concept of your team playing a season/championship – complete with stat progression for your players. “We want upgrades to feel really meaningful, really specialising characters” says Mode 7′s Paul Taylor, who’s writing the campaign. The devs offer roguelikes as possible touchstone for what they have planned, which raises some intriguing, permadeathy possibilities. The plan is to, as with Frozen Synapse, sell a beta, multiplayer-only version of the game early, then add singleplayer into the full version further down the line.

There you go: a sports game for people who don’t play sports games, as well as for people who do. It’s got me very interested and I don’t play sports games, so hopefully that’s a sign of potential success, but we shall see. Later this week I’ll bring you an interview with the devs, talking more about how and why Frozen Endzone happened and how it plays.

 

[Garm]

Game looks awesome. Hopefully BB and this help spark some type of new fantasy/sports gaming wave.

 

[Atomic]

I like nervous_testpilot techno music

 

[Lightknight]

as a fan of football and especially the strategy behind it

You meant actual football, right ? Or that boring USian handball-rugby thing ?

 

[tuluse]

as a fan of football and especially the strategy behind it

You meant actual football, right ? Or that boring USian handball-rugby thing ?

 

[Ulminati]

Solution would be to have americans pick another name to a sport in which a ball is not primarily moved using feet. Also, remove "world series" from games in which teams from most major countries aren't competing.

 

[tuluse]

Rugby Football, American Gridiron Football, Association Football are all subsets of "football".

Solution would be for people not try to appear clever on the internet by claiming one type or another isn't "football".

 

[OSK]

The solution would be for America to bomb faggot countries.

Also, soccer isn't even a real sport. It's rigged theatrics like wrestling.

 

[DakaSha]

O look guise generic kwan itt

 

[Horus]

Solution would be to have americans pick another name to a sport in which a ball is not primarily moved using feet. Also, remove "world series" from games in which teams from most major countries aren't competing.

For the avarage kwan World=U.S.A.:patriot:

 

[Cyberarmy]

Geez... i was hoping for some real Frozen Synapse sequel If I ever want to play something like this I'll just stick with Blood Bowl.

 

[Infinitron]

Trash Whisky

 

[Infinitron]

Beta coming in two days: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/03/synapse-judgment-frozen-endzone-trailer-touches-down/

 

[Burning Bridges]

Sorry it looked like a flipper game at first. But as someone who was hooked on games like Speedball, I can see the appeal of this, especially if there are seasons, some sort of manager part etc.

Though the techno music is still crap.

 

[DakaSha]

beeta

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I have a feeling that when this game will be released, we'll see another annouce.

Thumbs up for Frozen Friendzone, the ultimate turn-based date sim!

 

[Infinitron]

Beta released! http://www.frozenendzone.com/

RPS preview: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/05/impressions-frozen-endzone/

They find it a bit too sterile.

What I’m most concerned about is that Endzone only offers so many permutations of victory, defeat and surprise. The range of weapons and the use of sightlines in Frozen Synapse meant it was near-impossible to predict quite how any game would play out, but here everyone and everything’s visible from the off and the only possible actions are run, pass or block. I don’t know how often players will be exclaiming “well, I certainly didn’t see that one coming!” or far more abusive words to that effect.

Then again, I’m only at the very tip of the iceberg of learning Frozen Endzone. I can tell it’s a remarkably balanced machine, with any hit of fat or flab shorn off in order to ensure the essential strategy of run/score is as tight and precise as can be, and as such the trick to long-term success is to grasp every nuance and master the dark art of the feint. My suspicion is that this being in many ways a simpler, leaner game, this is more suited to high-level play than Synapse was, and already playing against other folk in the beta I can feel myself struggling to keep up.

...

It probably doesn’t help that the game comes across as a little plain to me. Its gleaming chrome robo-shoulders and Tyrell Corporation backdrops make it a big step up in graphical gloss and fancypantsiness from the icy neon silhouettes of Synapse, but while the latter derived a clear personality of its own by going all-out austere, this feels caught in a bit of a halfway house. Robots! Playing football! But that’s about as far as it goes: all the in-game text is as buttoned down as a Victorian headmaster on his way to Sunday church service, the bots make no sounds other than when they collide, they all look the same way and move the same way, the pitches only differ in terms of crate-like obstacle placement…

While I appreciate this is all part of a deliberate, Srs Bsns aesthetic (the clue’s in the name, and all that), for me it robbed Endzone of some potential joy and thrill, not to mention that when you’re playing multiple games at once it’s that much harder to keep track of which one’s which when they all look the same. A couple of times I’ve had a strop about robots not doing what I’d ordered them to do, only to later discover that actually it was a different game, and actually I’m playing as the red robots rather than the blue ones I was in the other game. Whoops. Clearly I need to pay more attention, but a little more visual variation would go a long way here.

I like it, even though it feels as cold to the touch as a dead snake in the snow. Part of me really wants to bounce right off it, knee-jerking that it’s too cold and too focused on extremely competitive game-players, but at the same time the elegance and purity of the mechanics means I can see how I will get better, that this isn’t a matter of learning a vast ruleset but instead simply of exercising my brain, making it more agile, more able to predict. There’s never anything more to it than telling my guys where to run to, but that turns out to be an amazingly involved, unpredictable and demanding game all by itself. Making ten seconds seem to last a tense, challenging lifetime is a hell of an achievement.