js13kgames is a long-running game jam with a simple goal: create a JavaScript game in 13 Kilobytes of zipped JavaScript. This year’s theme is Unicorns and Rainbows. I’m creating a grand strategy game about conquering the Rainbow Kingdown.

I wanted to add a bit of variety to gameplay so decided to add two new units: initially thought of “dragons” and “pegasus”. It should be simple, right?

Nope, a lot of design work, simulation and iteration was needed to make them useful… I really admire the developers of bigger RTS games that have to design dozens of units and make them fun. Just two here and it was driving me crazy.

Spent a lot of time and efforts trying to make pegasus useful… since just having them be quicker than the other units didn’t seem enough even if, as a human player, I believed moving quickly between towns was a great bonus to allow for more flexible deployments; the AI had to be taught to value speed and use it in their simulation, in order to help assess their usefulness.

In the end, what made them useful was a huge attack bonus when ambushing other units in roads, they’ll absolutely destroy anything on their way if you play them opportunistically. I guess that’s good enough for a first version to see where it leads.

Also in the end I decided to re-theme “pegasus” to “unicorns” since they were being represented with a dove emoji which was pretty lame. This means regular troops are now trident infantry, and unicorns are now a elite unit.

Adding those new types of units meant some unplanned scenarios for combat physicality as you are now much more likely to send more than one of your units into battle (different types don’t merge together), so I already had to address some bugs about it.