Hey everyone,
I’ve just released Alpha 1.1 of Ancient Echoes: Tactics, my free 1v1 tactical deckbuilding game.
Ancient Echoes is played on an 8×8 battlefield. Before a match, both players build a deck of 5 Units and 5 Terrains, then place parts of the battlefield themselves before the actual fight begins.
Units use board-game-like movement patterns, while Terrain changes movement, positioning and the value of different Units.
There is no random card draw and no random damage — the idea is that your complete strategy is visible on the board from the beginning.
https://ancientechoes.itch.io/ancient-echoes-tactics-eng
Gameplay
Alpha 1.2 is mostly about making the game feel more complete and making it easier to actually understand what happened during a match.
The biggest additions and changes are:
- Music and a capture sound have been added across the game.
- Replay system — completed matches can now be watched again.
- Match History keeps track of previous games and results.
- The Deck Builder has received a substantial visual overhaul, including proper card frames, filtering and clearer card inspection.
- Unit and Terrain cards now use dedicated Common and Rare card frames.
- In-game card inspection has been redesigned to match the card presentation used in the collection and Deck Builder.
- The game includes a five-part interactive tutorial covering movement, Terrain, abilities, keywords and deckbuilding.
- Hours of Calamity, the first expansion, currently contains 45 additional Unit and Terrain cards.
- A number of online synchronization issues and gameplay bugs have also been fixed.
Deck Building
One of the things I like most about the game is that Terrain is part of deckbuilding as well.
You are not only deciding which Units you want to use — you are also deciding what kind of battlefield those Units will fight on.
A slow Unit might suddenly become much more valuable when combined with the right Terrain, while an opponent’s movement options can be restricted by how both players shape the board.
About the project
Ancient Echoes started as a fairly simple question:
What would happen if chess-like movement was combined with deckbuilding and customizable terrain?
It has grown quite a bit since then.
There is now online PvP, AI opponents, accounts, collections, packs, tutorials, different factions and a growing card pool.
The game is completely free.
There are no purchases and no donations involved. I’m mainly building it because I wanted this game to exist, and honestly the thing I want most is simply to see people actually play it.
So if you try Alpha 1.1 — whether you enjoy it, hate it, break something or discover a completely ridiculous strategy — I’d genuinely be interested to hear about it.
Feedback is very welcome, but even just playing a match is already appreciated.
Thanks for taking a look.