Designing the first turn-based combat prototype for Tactics of the Fractured Eternity

This is the first devlog in what we hope will be a long series, charting the development of Tactics of the Fractured Eternity — the flagship game from Little Gary Games, the indie studio inside LogiNestForge.

Today, the first playable prototype of turn-based combat. What we built, what works, what doesn't, and what we threw away.

 

The premise of the combat layer

Tactics of the Fractured Eternity is a turn-based tactical RPG. At the tactical layer (what you do in any given engagement), it's grid-based combat with elevation, cover, and reaction systems. At the strategic layer (the world between engagements), it's a persistent-state campaign where decisions cascade across acts.

This first prototype focused entirely on the tactical layer. Grid, units, turns, basic actions. No story, no progression, no menus that mattered. The point was to find out whether the core combat loop felt good before we built anything around it.

 

What we built first

The minimum viable combat loop:

•       A 12×12 hexagonal grid. We chose hex over square because elevation and adjacency rules are cleaner.

•       Two factions of four units each. Identical stats. The only variable was position.

•       Three action types per turn: Move, Attack, Wait. Each unit has 2 action points per turn.

•       Line-of-sight calculated from unit eye height, with terrain blocking.

•       Damage as a flat number — no dice, no variance. We wanted to see how the system felt with all the noise removed.

 

Two weeks to build the prototype. About 1,500 lines of code in our internal tactical engine. No art beyond placeholder hex tiles and coloured cubes for units.

 

What we learned in the first 10 sessions

We played the prototype against ourselves and a handful of testers from inside LogiNestForge. Some findings were predictable. Others surprised us.

Hex feels right

Adjacency on hex is six-way rather than four- or eight-way, which makes positional decisions more interesting. The decision "do I move two hexes or three?" is more nuanced than the equivalent on a square grid. We're keeping hex.

 

Flat damage feels boring

Removing variance was supposed to expose the core decisions. Instead, it made the game feel like a puzzle with a single correct answer. Tactical games need some uncertainty to reward reading the board rather than calculating. We'll reintroduce damage variance in the next prototype — but bounded, with a visible expected value.

 

Line-of-sight is the most important system

Of all the systems in this prototype, the one that produced the most interesting decisions was line-of-sight. Hiding behind cover, repositioning to break enemy sightlines, predicting where opponents would move next — these were the moments the testers got excited about. LOS isn't a feature we can short-cut in the full game. It needs to be central.

 

Two action points per turn is too few

The action economy felt constrained. Most turns reduced to "move and attack" or "move twice". The interesting decisions — feinting, repositioning, sacrificing damage for advantage — only appeared when we increased to 3 action points. We'll likely settle on 3 with action costs varying by action type.

 

Identical units is a useful test

Stripping out unit asymmetry meant differences in player skill showed up cleanly. Two equally-skilled players produced close, interesting games. One stronger player won easily. That's good — it means the system rewards skill, which is what tactical games should do.

The next prototype will reintroduce unit classes, but with a smaller asymmetry budget than we'd originally planned. Class differences need to add flavour, not dominate outcomes.

 

What we threw away

Two design decisions from the initial spec didn't survive the first prototype:

•       Real-time animation between turns. We tried a half-second animation for movement and attack. It made the game feel slow without adding clarity. Replaced with snap-cut state changes and a brief flash on impact.

•       Full fog-of-war. We started with hidden enemy positions until line-of-sight was established. It made the prototype frustrating to test (you spent half the game wandering looking for opponents). The full game will have partial fog with intelligence rules; the prototype now shows all units.

 

Both were defensible design choices in the abstract. Both proved wrong when actually played. This is why prototypes exist — design documents can argue for hours; playtests resolve arguments in minutes.

 

What's next

Over the next month:

•       Reintroduce bounded damage variance and measure how it affects game length and decision quality.

•       Add three asymmetric unit classes (vanguard, ranger, support) with deliberately small differences.

•       Implement the reaction system — opportunity fire, intercepts, defensive moves. Reactions are the spine of tactical games and we've been deferring them.

•       Begin work on elevation rules. Hex grids handle elevation well; we want to feel that.

 

Devlogs will continue every few weeks. They're as much for us as for the audience — writing about a design problem clarifies what we actually believe about it.

If you're interested in tactical games, systems design, or how a tiny studio inside a software company actually builds an indie tactics RPG, follow along. Comments and reactions welcome — we read everything, even if we don't always reply quickly.

Tactics of the Fractured Eternity is in early development. No release date. No promises. Just the work, one prototype at a time.