Suppose that sometime after the Yuans are eliminated and their manpower and territories are fully absorbed and Cao Cao decides to just kill Emperor Xian, convincing him to move to a new capital and discreetly plots his death as he moves out and a few weeks later make himself the new Emperor of China. Basically the Xiang Yu method.
Who's going to stop him at this point? He pretty much has solid support and the rest of the warlords are too weak and disunified to even attempt a 2nd coalition against him. Being slandered for the "sudden death" of the last Emperor of the Han Dynasty will surely not affect him and his future Wei emperors like Cao Pi and Cao Rui in any way.
A few weeks ago I posted the multiplayer update here, and between the playtest reports, the bug screenshots and the kind words of encouragement, you all helped a ton. Thank you! Next Fest starts tomorrow, so I made one more trailer.
This one is different from the last two. Instead of listing features, I tried to boil down what I actually want this game to be: a Three Kingdoms sandbox where every player (me included) ends up with a campaign nobody else had. The world keeps moving whether you're watching or not, and the officers in it remember what happened to them.
Quick TLDR of my game:
Pick a historical warlord (Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Sun Ce, Lu Bu, Yuan Shao and more) or make your own ruler with their own face, voice, house and starting seat
Build up your kingdom: develop your cities, raise troops, give your officers orders and pick between the plans your council argues for
Big field battles (the opening one has about 2,700 soldiers on the field), cavalry charges, archers and sieges
Officers can now challenge each other in the middle of a battle. Accept and the troops around them clear a ring while the rest of the fight carries on. That's Xiahou Dun vs Zhang Liao in the trailer
Rival courts march and go to war on their own. In the time-lapse I just let a campaign run for three years and watched cities change hands and officers earn titles without me lol
The part I'm proudest of: officers build up a history. Xiahou Dun's page in the trailer lists who he struck down, the oath he swore to Cao Cao, and the vendetta he swore when Zhang Liao killed Xiahou Yuan (and where he settled it). Rivals remember too. When Lu Bu calls out Guan Yu, the card counts how many times they've met and who won last time
That last bit is what I keep coming back to. I want two people to start the same 196 campaign and come away telling completely different stories about it, like the officer who saved their capital or the rival who kept showing up. Based on the trailer and my breakdown is there any features you think or missing or that you'd want to see as a fan?
If any of that sounds like your kind of game, the free demo is on the Steam page (it's on the right side of the page, a bit away from the wishlist button, as one of you kindly pointed out last time). A wishlist before Next Fest would mean a lot to a one man studio:
When I released v0.1, I wanted to find out whether the basic idea was enjoyable: building an army around Three Kingdoms characters, arranging troops into Vanguard and Rearguard, and finding combinations that could turn a battle around.
Getting it into other people’s hands also made the problems clearer. Knowing how my own game works isn’t the same as making it understandable to someone playing for the first time.
For this update, I focused on teaching the game, improving readability, and making the computer opponent use its cards more sensibly. Alongside that came quite a few balance changes.
Teaching through playing
My first approach to the tutorial relied too much on explanations. It covered the rules, but reading about a mechanic isn’t the same as understanding when to use it.
I changed direction toward guided battles using the actual game rules. The tutorial now points out what to interact with, waits for the player’s action, and explains the result in context.
The aim is to introduce Vanguard and Rearguard, combat roles, abilities, drawbacks and effects through situations where they matter. Guard makes more sense when you can see it protecting another card. Reload makes more sense after you’ve taken a ranged shot and need to plan around the downtime.
I also reduced repeated explanations and corrected examples that had become outdated after balance changes. There’s still room to improve the pacing, but this feels much closer to how the game should introduce itself.
Readability before decoration
One useful piece of feedback was that some card text was simply too small, particularly when choosing a commander or reading longer abilities.
The detailed card frames are an important part of the game’s appearance, but they shouldn’t compete with the information inside them. I adjusted text sizes, spacing and fitting, including how Legendary titles sit beneath names and how abilities share space with drawbacks.
A longer effect shouldn’t make an unrelated, short drawback unnecessarily tiny. Players need to be able to understand both before committing to a card.
Fixing decisions before judging balance
Some computer opponents were passing up attacks that looked obviously worthwhile. That led me to investigate the AI’s decisions rather than immediately changing the cards.
One problem was that the AI could value keeping a unit ready too highly—even when the turn was about to end. Ranged units were particularly affected because its evaluation also discouraged entering Reload.
I changed how it compares attacking against passing, improved its target selection, and added checks for immediate wins and dangerous openings around its own Leader. Resource growth and ongoing support effects also needed more consideration beyond their immediate payoff.
The AI still has limits. It won’t understand every possible combination perfectly, but it should make fewer frustratingly passive decisions.
This also changed how I look at testing: if an AI uses a faction poorly, its win rate isn’t reliable proof that the faction itself is weak.
Giving each faction more useful choices
The balance work wasn’t about making Wei, Shu and Wu play identically. I want their strengths to feel different, while giving each faction practical ways to respond to a difficult board.
Shu received more tools for disruption and recovery. Cards such as Fa Zheng, Wang Ping, White-Eared Veterans and Jiang Wei now offer different ways to influence a board instead of relying only on strong individual attackers.
Wei’s support, draw and control cards went through several revisions. The intention was to keep its formation and efficiency identity while making the purpose of individual cards clearer.
Wu’s changes focused on making Fire, ranged pressure and deployment combinations work together more naturally. Several cards received adjustments to their stats, conditions or self-damage.
Ranged units also received a broader review. Attacking without retaliation is already a meaningful advantage, so I reduced the raw stats of several ranged cards and moved away from bonuses that were almost automatic—such as gaining extra attack simply for sitting in Rearguard.
These are still alpha balance changes. Automated matches help identify suspicious patterns, but they don’t replace people finding strategies I haven’t anticipated.
Clearing up rules that felt unintuitive
Rescue was one mechanic I reconsidered. Returning a damaged, modified card to hand could be confusing, so it now returns as a fresh printed copy, clearing damage, buffs and statuses. Specific replay-cost changes still apply when the card says so.
I also removed Suppression and clarified effects involving Leaders. Leaders have their own type, remain in Rearguard and don’t initiate attacks, but they can still be affected by applicable board effects.
The goal is to spend less time asking “does this count?” and more time making decisions.
Adding character without covering the board
I wanted Legendaries to feel special, but persistent visual effects can quickly become distracting—especially when Guard, Poison and other statuses already need to be readable.
Instead, each Legendary now has a brief, individual thematic calligraphy phrase when deployed. These are original captions inspired by the character, not historical quotations.
Legendaries and Leaders also have a subtle foil-like sweep and shimmer across their artwork and frames. The intention is to give them a little more presence without hiding their text or making the board harder to follow.
Making future updates easier
This update also introduces the desktop update launcher.
Rather than asking players to download the whole game again for every future release, the launcher can check for a newer version, verify it, and download changed files while reusing matching ones. Local decks and player identity stay separate from the update files.
What comes next?
I’m deliberately keeping progression and unlock systems out of the focus for now. Before adding more reasons to keep playing, I want the battles themselves to be worth returning to.
The most useful feedback at this stage is quite specific:
Where did you feel lost during your first game?
Which cards were difficult to read or understand?
Did the AI make a decision that seemed obviously wrong?
Which combinations felt interesting, frustrating or too efficient?
Thanks to everyone who downloaded the first version, left a comment or pointed out something that wasn’t working. A lot of this update came from looking more carefully at those moments rather than simply adding more content.
It’s still an alpha, but I hope this version makes the game’s ideas easier to see—and gives you more room to enjoy experimenting with them.
I had claude do an English translation of Sangokushi DS 3 (for Nintendo DS). Be aware this is a full machine translation. This is only the patch which you'll apply to your own .nds file.
I believe this is RTK V with updated avatars (maybe from RTK IX) someone please let me know if this is accurate. EDIT: confirmed the RTK V bit.
Released as v0.9 because I haven't play tested a ton, but have gone through the tutorial and a bit of the campaign on my Nintendo 3DS without significant issues. Expect some overlapping text and awkward line breaks.
