Tooth and tail campaign guide Continue Real-time video game strategy Tooth and TailDeveloper (s)Pocketwatch GamesPublisher (s)Pocketwatch GamesPlatform (s)Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Linux, PlayStation 4ReleaseSeptember 12, 2017Genre (s)Real-timeMode (s)Single-player, multiplayer game Tooth and Tail is a real-time strategy developed and published by the indie development team Pocketwatch Games, the company behind Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine. Tooth and Tail was released in September 2017 for Windows, MacOS, Linux and PlayStation 4. The game is set in a society of anthropomorphic animals at a time of acute food shortages, leading to a revolt by political parties with different ideologies regarding the purchase of food. The gameplay consists of single-player and multiplayer modes and supports gamepads and keyboard and mouse arrangements. Players start by selecting six units from a pool of twenty to use during a match. Once each player has chosen, the goal is to destroy the enemy's resources through building structures and building units. Each player controls the commander, not has a top-down view. The development of the Tooth and Tail began towards the end of Monaco's development. Various real-time strategy (RTS) games were prototypes before the game, then called Armada, was announced in March 2014. The premise was to create a RTS game without micromanagement or the need for a lot of action per minute. From the beginning, the game was designed to work well on both gamepads and keyboard and mouse settings. In August 2014, the name of the game was changed to Lead to Fire, and in August 2015 was finally changed to Tooth and Tail, which is a reference to the ratio of the tooth-tail. Before its official release, the game's developers offered to run on the Steam Early Access platform, although this did not happen. The game received positive results and won two awards in 2016; Best character design at The Intel Up level and tied up with a giant policeman for Guest Choice on the Media Indie Exchange. Single-player mode wasn't rated as highly as multiplayer modes; Reviewers said the difficulty spikes a disturbance of pleasure. Many comparisons have been made with other games and the media; mainly with the novel series Redwall and the novella animal farm. The plot of Tooth and Tail takes place in the 19th century in a society where anthropomorphic animals face chronic food shortages. Many animals decided to resort to cannibalism to overcome the shortage. Civilized, led by Archimedes, created a lottery system that ultimately controlled who was eaten. This way of life has caused controversy throughout the country; Commonfolk did not like the idea of being eaten, nor the high cost of food. the rich merchant of Bellafid was chosen to be eaten; he rebelled, intending to change the system of food selection into a system based on some version of meritocracy. Common people led by who wanted to introduce a voting system to replace the lottery, also rebelled. To overthrow the Civilized, Hopper and Bellafaid joined forces despite their different ideals. Civilized entered the struggle for the preservation of power and the status quo. Although the revolution threw the leadership into general chaos, some military elements remained organized. The quartermaster, the shady and pragmatic head of the secret police of K.S.R. the late Tsarina, seized control of the military elements and supported Archimedes and civilized at the moment. Towards the end of the game, the pigs, who are dying of war, tell the four armies that they passed false information to three other armies, tricking them into gathering in one place. While the armies fight each other to the point of destruction, the pigs rise up, showing that they had a plan to overthrow the queen and avenge slavery and eating of some sort. A horde of pigs then ambushes the final standing army, destroying it and leaving the fate of the commanders and the rest of the meat-eating animals ambiguous. The gameplay of The Tooth Gameplay and TailA screenshot of the game featuring HUD, along with various structures and unitsA showcasing the shared screen capabilities of the game Tooth and Tail is a real-time video game strategy designed to be used with gamepads and keyboard and mouse installations. The game has single-player and multiplayer modes. In single player mode, the player progresses through the story, completing levels of increasing difficulty. Each level has goals with varying degrees of onerousness, depending on the player's progress. To complete each level the main goals must be met, while the heroic ones, usually more difficult ones, are optional. The multiplayer mode can be done with a ranked or unrated online matchmaking and a local multiplayer split screen. Up to four players can play at the same time, either as a two-man team, or compete to be the last standing. Before the start of the match, players must select a commander from four factions, and then work six units out of twenty, which will be used during the match. Fifteen of these units are offensive and multi-level, depending on their strength and cost. The other five units are defensive. All options are final; other units cannot be unlocked during the match. Once all players have chosen their units, they control the army commander and must build structures such as farms to gather the necessary resources. Most structures can only be built near mills, preventing players from building near enemies during reconnaissance or espionage. At any time, players can bury their commanders back to allow them to build structures. The units are manufactured structures, called warrens, suggesting that the player has enough food to summon the right units. Depending on the level, some units are more expensive than others. Food is resource, meaning players must strategize their attack in advance. Structures called bonfires act as a combination of mills and farms, allowing you to build next to structures, as well as produce food. To win, the player must destroy the enemy's mills and bonfires. The map is procedurally generated, implying that each player will have different advantages and disadvantages in each match. Development After the success of the video game Pocketwatch Games 2013 Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine, the development of Tooth and Tail was announced on March 11, 2014. The game was based on the design of Andy Schatz, founder of Pocketwatch Games, and roommate Tom Wexler, made during a college called Dino Drop. As with the development of Monaco, many games with similar mechanics were prototypes. Schatz told Jim Rossignol of Rock, Paper, Shotgun about Dino Drop, which he described as a split-screen strategy with autonomous units. Schatz and co-designer Andy Nguyen were actively developing this real-time version of the strategy towards the end of Monaco. Originally designed under the working name Armada, stylized as ARMADA, the game was advertised as a real-time strategy (RTS) without the necessary micromanagement and plenty of action per minute that it attributed to the Starcraft series; Starship and Command and Conquest were credited as influence on the Tooth and Tail. Armada was designed to appeal to people who don't normally play RTS games but have also had the opportunity to play the game at a deep level. The game was designed to be a controller and gamepad friendly; Schatz implied that there were no good RTS games that used them. Schatz compared Armada to Monaco, saying, I want to do what we did with RTS, with Monaco, with the stealth genre, and that limits the set of controls to make real physical interaction easy to pick up without limiting the complexity of the game itself. He pitched the idea to about forty people at the Game Developers Conference to get positive reviews. At that time there was no time frame for development and specific specifics (e.g. names, themes and styles). A screenshot of Tooth and Tail when it was called LEADtoFIRE The name of the game was later changed to Lead to Fire, stylized as LEADtoFIRE, in August 2014. Throughout these stages of development, Pocketwatch Games broadcast its progress on the Twitch streaming platform. It has been described as a miniature PAX; way to show development and allow fans to play test games. Around the same time, the game draws inspiration from Hearthstone, a card game in which players build decks and compete with others. Schatz noted that there would be about thirty units and structures to choose from, and while there were still to be it was estimated that players would be able to select between six and eight of them per match. Polygon announced a pre- release date somewhere in 2015 in August 2015, the game got its official name; A tooth and a tail. The change was attributed to Lead to fire not foreshadowing well with developers,18 and to believe no one knew how to properly pronounce it. The name is a reference to the ratio of the tooth-tail; The artistic style was shown at the same time as the official name. Schatz wrote that, like SpyParty, the game should look completely shitty as long as it's absolutely amazing. The art style has been described as an upgraded version of the 1990s pixel art. Composer Austin Wintori, who also worked on Monaco, was hired to create the soundtrack for the game. The sound design was made by PowerUp Audio, the team behind Crypt of the Necrodancer and Darkest Dungeon. The characters in the game speak a language based on Russian language, which was invented by Kevin Regami of PowerUp Audio; Schatz told Louis Brierley of Heavy Mag that the language in the game is translated into English.