As the old saying goes, we dig giant robots. One group of souls embodying this adage is indie developer-publisher Toge Production, whose game Kriegsfront Tactics is playable at Busan Indie Connect Festival 2023.

We caught up with Yohannes “Yoyo” Yokomichi, QA Manager at Toge Productions to talk all things giant robots and tactics games, including how the team uses  social media to support design ideas for the title.

It feels like mechs are really in vogue nowadays with a lot of different mech games coming out. Does that scare you or excite you knowing that there’s an audience for this game?

Yoyo:  Yeah the amount of mech games, like you said, there is a lot of them like Phantom Brigade and Mech warrior, a new mech warrior also got announced and also like the remake of The Front Mission.

But I think the fact that there is so many make games coming out kind of tells us there is a lot of needs and, wants from the players to have that kind of game. So it actually excites us to keep [making] this game even better.

With Kriegsfront Tactics openly wearing his influence on its sleeves. Do you feel is more important to appeal to nostalgia, the fans who are playing mech tactics game growing out or try to introduce it as something new to the audience?

Yoyo: I mean, definitely from the graphic style, I think you can say we’re trying to induce some kind of nostalgia. But I think we also bring a lot of new elements and new gameplay, new modern gameplay elements to the game as well. So. while the aesthetic is retro. Or you can say nostalgic, but I think we’ve put some new twist and modern take on the other genre as well.

You guys are very open about the development of the game on Twitter. Do you feel having an open communication has helped the game in any way?

Yoyo: Definitely. We have been, like I said, very often we shared a lot of early development screenshots and like development features of whether, and we ask the player whether they like certain kind of features and pick between maybe a and B.

So it’s like A-B testing. So that way we knew exactly what the player wants from this kind of game so we can deliver it to them.

So were the developers introduced to miniature painting as part of the training for the game?

Yoyo: No, for [miniature painting] I think it’s not part of our training. But I do like the designer of the Mech, the original designer, which is I think he’s [from Thailand], correct me if I wrong, but his name is Lewis.

So I think he does the miniature painting here. He also make like miniature of the Mechs, two Mechs actually, that there is in another event that he made himself and he painted it himself. So the one that does the miniature painting it, I think he did.

Anything else you wanna add?

Yoyo: Okay, so we would like for you guys to look forward to our prologue. We are planning to release it in January during our annual during there is a smaller event that we’re gonna do there to to release some of the telling you some of the news, exciting news that we’re trying to to deliver to the players. So look forward to it. Thank you.

Kriegsfront Tactics is one of many games being featured at Busan Indie Connect 2023. Our thanks to Yoyo and Toge Productions for taking time out of their busy schedules to chat about their upcoming title ahead of next year’s prologue release.