While showcasing War of the Human Tanks to our friends in the early stages of the project, a common and more or less universal feedback we got was that the battle backgrounds (which you can see in various screenshots we have online at the moment) look too abstract. My friend Serkan Sanver who works as a game designer, made a specific suggestion to make the backgrounds display the terrain shape instead to make them more approachable.

I discussed this idea with the team, and we all shared the same general opinion that having maps in the background would be a good improvement. What this could mean in practice was a matter for more debate and dozens of experiments in different styles. When we brought the option up with Yakiniku Banzai, the original developers, they gave the change the green light. The funny thing is, it turns out they already had the same idea and had employed a similar feature in their latest title, Recycle Princess, which is still in production.

Eventually we decided to follow the same general style Yakiniku Banzai had turned to, albeit with a somewhat more modern touch since Recycle Princess is set in a fantasy setting.

I asked Yulay Devlet, a talented art designer friend of mine who also designed our cute logo, to take on the task and he accepted the challenge. After bouncing a lot of drafts we were able to reach a consensus on the style and details, and a complete version of our first map was created. Here you can see it being used in the first battle of the game, Ookawahara Battery Recapture.

Above is the original Japanese logo for War of the Human Tanks. As you can see the ‘series’ name is emphasized heavily in the proportions.

I prepared many alternative versions and our team picked their favorite from amongst those. That one went over many, many changes over the course of several days, and finally came out as the version you can see below.

I hope you like the design as much as we do.

This is naturally just one handpicked detail I wanted to share with everyone. This particular image is important because you will be seeing it everywhere.

The progress overall has been rapid with each team member exploring different aspects of the game. Stay tuned!