Every now and then, when the moon is gibbous and the wind is blowing from Tanelorn, we put aside our consultancy work and make a microdev game of our own.

This year, it’s The Dust of Battle, a lightning-fast turn-based tactical game built around decisive Strike vs Counter battles on unique 7-zone battlefields. While other strategy games with levelling characters take forty hours to complete, ours takes forty minutes!

I’ve done it three times before. First, there was Play with Fire, where I got to work with Paranoia RPG creator Greg Costikyan.

Then there was Silk, my quirky tribute to the late Mike Singleton.

Lastly, Scramble All Fighters!, which was a chance to make a small game out of an old AI system my friend Neil Lothbruk and I designed in the early days of ihobo.

This time, I’m not just trying to make a microdev game, I’m trying to make a successful indie game – but I need your help to do it!

Our campaigns are short, intense, and deeply replayable, with a roguelite structure to provide long-term progress. Warriors level up automatically after every battle, but you also choose one to receive a Trophy, and those warriors become the backbone of the warband for the rest of the campaign. It’s one of many high-impact decisions that makes every campaign a unique experience.

It’s all the tactics experience without the drag.

The Dust of Battle now has its own section within the ihobo games newsletter. If you want to follow the game’s development, you’ll receive updates automatically, and you can manage section subscriptions at any time.

How fast is our new game? See for yourself!

I’m really proud of my design work on the class-engine and combat system on this, and my dev partner Matt Mower – an old friend of mine in more ways than one! – has been an amazing engineer and robot-whisperer. We both believe in the potential of this game, but we’re entirely dependent upon word of mouth and community support to get the game noticed, so we have to ask for your help.

It would really help The Dust of Battle if you Wishlisted it on Steam right now! It takes thirty seconds if you already have a Steam account.

Even if you don’t play turn-based games, your wishlist now helps generate what’s called ‘wishlist velocity’, which increases the chance that Valve will show it to the people who will love this game.

Wishlist now, please!

With unlimited love,

Chris.