There have been countless IP’s from the Nintendo DS era that have yet to make their debut in the current generation of consoles, and one of the most beloved is Advance Wars. The tactical turn-base series has been cherished by thousands of players across the world. It goes to show that the demand is high, when Japanese dev team Project Milk came together to start the TINY METAL Kickstarter campaign. In association with AREA 34, Inc., Project Milk is a team comprised of many seasoned veterans in the Japanese game development scene. This team was created in order to spark a dying genre in the modern day Japanese game development market, strategy games. The team is led by Hiroki Kikuta who has worked on Secret of Mana and Shining Hearts, and Hiro Inaba who has worked on Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and the Chrono Trigger-inspired I Am Setsuna.
TINY METAL follows the story of warring nations between the Artemesians and the Zipangs. The player plays as Nathan Gries, a Lieutenant of the Artemesian army who loses his mentor and king in an transport explosion during an escort. As a counter-offensive, Nathan is sent in to work with the White Fang operative Wolfram to fight against Zipangs. Meanwhile, Lord Commander Tsukumo from Zipang leads his army against the Aremesians, all the while, trying to figure out the truth within his country surrounding the incident.
The team have gone on to state that TINY METAL has all the necessary building blocks to make the entire core game, and that the Kickstarter funding for $50,000 is for adding extra assets and features to properly envision the team’s dream game. There is a prototype demo for the game available for the public on the Kickstarter page where some of the mechanics in the game are introduced. Check out the campaign, Steam greenlight or the demo. If you enjoy what you see, consider supporting the team!