Axis & Allies 1942 Online Development Update

Axis & Allies 1942 Online, Beamdog’s digital World War II-themed board game launched into Steam Early Access a while back, and if you’re curious about the game’s Early Access journey so far and Beamdog’s plans for its future, you should check out this recent development update. Here’s an excerpt:

Since the July 31st launch we’ve seen players from all over the world join the battle to relive the game they know and love— or take the plunge and play Axis & Allies for the first time. We’re incredibly grateful to our awesome community members who are essential to the game’s development through Early Access.

In this retrospective I’ll be sharing:

• Some of my favorite visual highlights
• A brief discussion of server issues
• An overview of our plans for the near future…!

[…]

WHAT’S NEXT?

Back in August we introduced some major player-requested features and fixes:

• Streamlined Combat Board Experience
• Alternate starting condition: The Larry Harris Gencon v3.0 variant
• Added animation and visual control options
• Performance and networking improvements
• Over 200+ bug fixes

Looking to the future, we’ll continue to keep the Axis & Allies community at the heart of our development plans.

Here are a few of the features we plan to include in future development work:

PLAYER PROFILES

• Keep track of your wins and losses
• See which power you play the most
• Review previous games

UNIT MOVEMENT & ARROWS

• We hear you loud and clear – there are too many clicks and the movement arrows get pretty confusing (…and it looks like spaghetti).
  • We plan to refine unit movement reduce the number of clicks needed to move unit stacks
  • We have a plan for how to represent unit movement in a much clearer way that should reduce the confusion (and no more spaghetti).

MATCHMAKING

• We want to speed up the time it takes for players to get into a game
• We’re working on a system to match players searching for games together
• We also plan to include a ladder system that matches players based on skill level

GAME NOTIFICATIONS

• We’re looking into ways we can notify you that it’s your turn, aside from email

FIGHTER, AIRCRAFT CARRIER AND TRANSPORT IMPROVEMENTS

• We agree it’s not always clear how the rules for these units work (especially if you’re new to the game)
• We’re taking steps to make the UI and visuals for these units more clear.

BETTER AI

• We’re working on getting our robot players up to snuff – but you are tough competition.
• We have a few ideas how we can make the AI more challenging contenders.

BUGS, POLISH, STABILITY

• As always, we’re prioritizing work on the stability of servers, improving the speed, and overall polish to the game.