April 2026 Devlog

This month was all about play testing and implementing feedback and adjustments.

Closed play test on Discord

The play tests mid-April were done with selected group in Panzer Vor Discord server and revealed several issues regarding the tanks and their respective roles. Since then parameters were adjusted, the first TD (SU-76) was added, and I decided to designate a passive for each tank type:

• Light tanks refund 50% of buying cost after destroyed.

• Medium tanks upgrade to the next evolution (e.g. Pz. III to Pz. IV or M4 Sherman to Firefly) and restore 50% or health 5 mins after being deployed.

• Heavy tanks start passive health regeneration when out of combat for more than 20s.

• Super heavy tanks cannot be immobilized.

• Tank destroyers do not get revealed after shooting.

These changes should make purchases units more valuable and add strategizing for each use case, plus I can add more significant medium tanks to the game without overwhelming the store. Currently just in the planning stage since I require more assets for tank upgrades.

More play tests will be held in June, you can sign up by joining the official Discord (link is at the end of the article).

In-person play test

Another play test I had was during an in-person event Expo Jeu held in Montreal, QC. This gave me a unique opportunity to see how people would approach playing Panzer Vor without prior experience with this type of games.

Steam post image Overall I received very valuable feedback about controls and visuals which impacted what I should focus on.

• Tank controls are now significantly different - instead of holding Ctrl to move the units, right mouse click is responsible for movement. Holding it would draw a frontline.

• Frontline now is direction agnostic for the most part. I noticed different people would draw frontline in a different direction, so to accommodate everyone, the frontline now expands from the center which makes it easier to rotate.

• The points and capture zones were reworked, and now the matches should be much more exciting. From both rounds of playtests it was clear that it is very hard to come back after one team lost control of the points. Even after regaining the majority of capture zones, you would still lose, and it just seemed like inevitable outcome. Now you only lose points if you have fewer zones captured and even controlling one would trigger overtime giving you an opportunity for comeback. Overtime has the highest earning rate, all tanks are upgraded right away, and capturing all zones will award you victory immediately. It is also limited by 5 minutes, whoever controls more zones by the end, wins the match.

• Store has been also reworked and now has more brief tank descriptions and cleared main stats. Playtests showed that users were often confused by which tanks to buy and were overwhelmed by the detailed stats. Steam post image

• Spotting mechanic was changed to be more clear for the players. The tests showed that it was very confusing to tell whether the tank was hidden and how to get maximum advantage from trees and bushes. Now having your tank behind a tree or bush will not impact it's spottability, instead you have to be inside the hiding area where the visual feedback will show you that your unit is actually hidden.

• Tanks are now much more accurate. I removed the rng from tank aim since it really messed with the outcome of the clash. Sometimes Tiger would miss all the shots and get destroyed and this was not dependent of player's skill. For this RTS I decided to remove aim rng for now, so the battle outcomes are much more predictable. The random with penetration still remains.

As I continue development, I want to get more feedback from different groups of players to build an enjoyable game.

UI Updates

The in-game UI has been updated slightly and now features more friendly rounded shapes, so it looks less like prototype UI. While there is still a lot of work required, it works and that's what matters right now.

Separated Game Rules

The rules for 1v1 and 3v3 game modes have been separated. The play tests showed that duel matches were much slower and less engaging than 3v3 chaotic battlefield.

Steamworks

In April, I started integrating Steamworks API to support starting and tracking the game on Steam with a lot of other features upcoming. Here are the features planned on the full release:

• Friend invites (groups and private matches)

• Steam Cloud (for saving your campaign progress)

• Steam Workshop (for custom campaigns and mods)

• Steam Achievements

• Steam Leaderboards (only when ranked matches are implemented)

More upcoming changes

In addition to implemented feedback, there are still couple of changes I decided to implement that should make the game more enjoyable and less frustrating to play.

Commander passive ability

This was in the works for a long time, but I never got to actually implementing it. This will help to keep commanders unique and offer some background benefit when you play certain character. Here are the examples of passive abilities:

• Beacon Network (Suzume): Destroyed player tanks act as beacons: once an unspotted enemy tank enters the 20m range, it will ping on the map.

• Divine Punishment (Iris): With every player tank destroyed gain 1 stack of Divine Punishment. Upon getting 5 stacks, the area around next destroyed enemy tank gets bombarded after 2s.

• Sharpshooter (Zheng): Increases critical damage chance by 10% for guns 80mm caliber or higher.

Expect passives to be ready at the end of June.

Ability Changes

To make all commanders equally enjoyable, I decided to change some abilities.

• Suzume is getting 'Air Strike'instead of 'Sparrow Sight'. This ability allows of a weaker version of 'Naval Strike' from Iris in terms of damage, but with added debuff for sight for the next 15s.

• Zheng is getting 'Slow Zone'instead of 'Taunt'. While Taunt is an interesting ability, it doesn't see many applications on the battlefield right now. It might come back after a rework. The Slow Zone allows players to deploy a round zone anywhere on the map where enemy tanks will get a significant 50% debuff to their speed. It is great on its own, but also very useful in combination with other abilities.

The cooldown times have been cut down significantly for regular abilities and ultimates will need energy to build up. Ultimate gets 1 energy every match tick (approximately 3s) and with every enemy tank destroyed by your tank.

Tank Upgrades

Another backlogged mechanic that will be added soon. These allow player to adjust some tanks for certain maps or anticipating weather changes. More variations for more skill expression!

Here are the currently planned upgrades:

• Camouflage Net - Reduces tank visibility by 10%

• Extra Health - Adds 17% more health. Cannot be used together with Overdrive.

• Overdrive - When tank HP is lower than 20%, increase reload speed and max movement speed by 25% for 30s. Cannot be used together with Extra Health.

• Fire extinguisher - Removes the fire debuff after just 1 tick.

• Reinforce tracks - Reduces the risk of getting immobilized due to track damage. Slightly reduces to speed. Cannot be user together with Road tracks.

• Road tracks - Significantly increases speed on paved and stone roads, but slightly reduces speed on dirt and sand. Increases penalty from climbing dirt or sand hills. Cannot be used together with Reinforced Tracks.

• Repair Kit - Increases recovery from any critical damage by 20%.

Installing an upgrade will increase the tank price by certain percentage.

Mini-map

This is a feature that was requested during all play tests. I will be implementing a mini-map in May and, likely, placing it in the top right corner of the interface with ability to click on it for a fast camera movement. Map also allows me to display abilities that are being used, better alerting players about the state of the match.

Thank you for reading, and I hope I provide enough insight into the game development journey using these devlogs. I try to deliver one every first Sunday of the month, but sometimes there are way too many things going on to get it out on time.

If you have any more comments and questions, you can leave them here or on the official Discord!

Follow Panzer Vor on Twitter! https://x.com/playpanzervor

Panzer Vor Discord: https://discord.gg/gyjSbBD

Wishlist the game if you still haven't!

-noxc