The Future of Bad North

2018 is coming to a close and this has been a crazy year for us, especially the last few months. Since August, we’ve released Bad North on 5 different hardware platforms and 5 different PC storefronts, and pushed out 7 patches!

We’ve been blown away by the response to the game, so we wanted to take a moment to thank you for all your support and feedback and also show a little sneak peek of what we have in store for 2019.

Android and iOS

Mobile versions of the game are still in the works, coming sometime next year. We’ve brought Amber Studio on board to handle the mobile porting and they are doing a great job. Things are progressing well but we can’t say exactly when these will arrive, due to super-secret going-ons behind the scenes. More news when we can share it.

The mobile port includes a number of optimisations that will also make their way to other platforms, which should help improve some of the occasional slowdowns on lower-spec’d PCs and Switch.

The Big Content Update

We’ve also (finally) started work on a major content update. We’d been hoping to get started on this phase of the project sooner, but it turns out that all that patching and releasing takes up quite a bit of time for a tiny team. Who would’ve guessed?

We don’t want to go into too much detail about what exactly will go into this update, because things can always change. But we’re looking to address much of the feedback we’ve received since launch, notably by improving:

  • The strategic gameplay layer of the map screen

  • The viability of taking multiple islands per turn

  • The variety in gameplay, especially by increasing the upgrade options

  • The variety in enemy types and how they interact with your troops, especially with regard to the ongoing archer discussions

  • The harshness of permadeath (including the death-spiral / domino effect)

  • The slow ramp-up of restarting campaigns

  • Replay value and the lack of meta-progression

  • Some additional difficulty options for both more casual and more hardcore players

Alongside all this we’ll be polishing up bits and pieces, adding some QoL features, and generally continuing to tune up the experience. This is going to be quite a large expansion so you’ll start to see less frequent patches to the game, but know that we’re still listening to your feedback and have some big things in store for 2019!