Voidfall Tactics — Update 0.5: Live and Dangerous
Date: July 9, 2026
Cloud Saves, Mobile Play, Boss Beasts, and Enemies That Actually Think
Voidfall Tactics is still mid-port from its original web prototype into Unity — and this
is the update where it finally starts to feel like a real, online game instead of a
thing that only runs on my machine. As always it was built on a feature branch and
merged via pull request; I’m a team of one, but I’m keeping the good-habits workflow
going. Where 0.4 was about giving fights real stakes and rewards, 0.5 is about two
things at once: getting the game into your hands wherever you are, and making the Void
genuinely dangerous to fight.
If you read the end of the last update, a few of these will look familiar — I promised
smarter AI, backend integration and web deployment, and a fire-breathing beast waiting
on its artwork. This is me making good on all three.
What’s New
Play Anywhere, Pick Up Anywhere
Voidfall Tactics now runs in a browser — including on your phone — with real touch
controls. Tap a tile to move, tap an enemy to attack, and for area attacks you tap once
to see the blast, then tap again to fire, so you’re never guessing where a grenade
lands. Long-press any unit to inspect it.
And your progress finally sticks. The title screen now offers New Game or Continue, and
the game quietly saves at your hub between missions, tied to your account. I put real
care into making that saving safe — if your connection hiccups mid-save, the game
tells you and lets you retry instead of ever risking your run. Boot up on your laptop,
continue on your phone.
The Void Gets Smart
Last update I gave every enemy a hidden Wisdom stat and had it steer exactly one
decision. This update, it steers a lot of them. Enemies now take cover behind crates and
barrels, hang back to take aimed shots instead of charging into your face, brace when
they can’t reach you, and can move, fire, and reposition all in a single turn. And the
smarter ones do all of that constantly while the mindless beasts still just charge —
a trained Void Marksman will slink into a firing lane and make you come to him, while a
Warpdog throws itself at your line. Fights feel like they’re being fought against you
now, not just simulated near you.
Boss Beasts
The Cindermaw is here. The fire-breathing Void beast I mentioned was “waiting in the
wings” now stalks the deeper decks, and its breath scorches everything in a line — so
watch your formation. It doesn’t come alone, either: the Beast Master runs the pack.
Certain decks are now deliberate, hand-crafted boss encounters instead of always being
rolled at random.
Explosive Decks
Some tiles now hold volatile barrels. Shoot one — or catch it in a grenade — and it goes
off in a blast that chains to other barrels nearby. It’s a neutral hazard, so it’s just
as happy to catch your squad as theirs; used well, it’s the best damage on the map.
Eyes on the Enemy
Enemy health is no longer an open book. You’ll see who you’re fighting, but not how much
fight they have left — until you scan them. Pack a Scanner and you can reveal a target’s
HP for the rest of the battle, turning “who do I focus?” into a real read rather than a
given.
Hand-Built Decks
Alongside the procedurally generated maps, some of the ship’s decks are now hand-designed
layouts — deliberate cover, chokepoints, and barrel placements — so the boss fights have
a stage worthy of them.
Quality of Life
- Tile highlights are now color-coded by action — move, attack, heal, utility — so your
options read at a glance - Explosion effects line up with the tile they hit, and highlight pulsing is smoother
- Cleaner text and menus throughout
A Note on Building for the Future
Even more than last time, this phase was mostly invisible groundwork — and that’s
becoming the part I enjoy most.
Two examples. First, the game’s content is now data-driven: enemies, crew, weapon
tuning, hand-made maps, and even which bosses appear on which decks all live in plain
data files. I can add a boss encounter or rebalance a weapon without touching a line of
game code. That boss “schedule” is what let the Cindermaw and Beast Master drop in
cleanly. Second, I didn’t build a save system for Voidfall — I built a save service for
every game I’ll ever put on the site. One account, many games, one shared piece of
plumbing. It’d have been faster to hardcode this one game’s saves; it’s far better to
build the machine once.
The AI rewrite is the same philosophy. Enemy decisions now run through a little scoring
system where teaching them a new trick is one small function, not a rewrite. As before,
I lean on Claude Code to do most of the actual writing while I stay responsible for the
design and the architecture — and that architecture work is increasingly where my
attention goes. It’s more fun to build a machine that makes good enemies than to
hand-script one.
What’s Next
Right now, a handful of friends are playtesting this build and I’m collecting their
feedback — the whole point of getting it onto real phones and browsers was to find the
rough edges I can’t see from the editor. Once I’ve folded that in, I’ll be opening it up
to logged-in players on the site, likely within a couple of weeks at most. After that:
more content and encounters to fill out those deeper decks, and continuing to sharpen the
enemies now that the framework for smart behavior is in place.
Thanks for following along — and if you’re one of my playtesters reading this, thank you.
Tell me what breaks.