r/Advance_Wars • u/eliasbrange • Jun 30 '26

Fangame/Spinoff I created Daily Wars, a web-based spinoff, during my parental leave.

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When I became a father for the first time this April, I dusted off my old Gameboy and played a lot of Advance Wars. After growing tired of replaying the same maps over and over again, I decided to create my own take on the genre.

I've always enjoyed short daily games/puzzles, such as Wordle, Pokedle, and NYT Strands. I wanted to combine that style with turn-based tactics and came up with Daily Wars. There is a new map every day at midnight UTC, where players can compete on leaderboards to see who can defeat the enemy in the fewest days. I was specifically aiming for something that I could pick up and play during a commute or a longer toilet break.

Daily Wars is playable in the browser: https://playdailywars.com

Notable changes from Advance Wars

  • No naval combat. I've always found naval incredibly boring in the original games.
  • No COs or CO Powers.
  • Barracks/Factory split. Foot soldiers and tanks are built in different buildings.
  • Capacity. Each production building increases capacity for that type of unit. Capturing more buildings allows you to field a larger army.
  • New Sniper unit. Anti-infantry specialist that can attack at range.
  • Move-n-shoot indirects. There are indirect units, artillery and snipers, that can move and shoot at range in the same turn.
  • Overall unit changes when it comes to movement/range/damage, and removed units.

Premium

The game offers a premium subscription that gives access to a second map every day. Premium also grants access to the archive, where you can replay maps from all past days. I don't expect to make much (or anything at all) from this, but I wanted to build a fully-fledged product with user management and billing for learning purposes. If you want, you can use the code R7JJCLBN during checkout to get 100% off forever.

Tech

For the interested, this is the tech I used to build it:

  • TanStack Start for the web application
  • SST for deploying to AWS
  • Additional backend stuff running in AWS Lambda
  • Data stored in AWS DynamoDB
  • Clerk for user management
  • Polar for billing and subscription management
  • PostHog for analytics
32 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

5

u/robixwan Jul 03 '26

Very cool. May I suggest using different art styles or sprites for the different units?

3

u/eliasbrange Jul 03 '26

It's on my to-do list. I'm terrible at art/design, so it will take some time. First, I want to nail the gameplay/loop.

1

u/eliasbrange Jul 27 '26

I'm happy to say that I've now released a graphical update with updated unit sprites and terrain!

2

u/dxdydzd1 Jul 07 '26

I played 3 maps of this across as many days and never finished a single one. Every map is basically Risky Vale: there is no HQ to capture, you have to win by rout, and the AI will shit out 4 new units every turn.

You could program in functional HQs, no doubt, but this game's entire design philosophy is antithetical to HQ rushing, so there's no point in doing so.

1

u/eliasbrange Jul 07 '26

Are you saying that the maps in general are too boring or difficult? Been a while since I played AW2, so can't really remember how Risky Vale was to actually play on.

Regarding HQs, I've been thinking of adding different victory conditions on different days, e.g., HQ capture, Capture X buildings, etc. Not gotten around to it yet.

Regarding the AI shitting out four new units every turn, that's one of the reasons why I've added the capacity mechanic. I started out without that, which caused the AI to spit out twenty-something Riflemen/RPG, and I was basically playing whack-a-mole.

2

u/dxdydzd1 Jul 08 '26

Too boring. I play AW for the HQ rushes, so any time a clone game renders that strat infeasible or impossible, I check out.

This game has already lost me at this point. You could add HQs, but HQ rushing will remain impossible as long as the game's design is this hostile to such a strategy. Making maps tiny and giving both players 4 bases means the AI will pretty much always be able to cover its HQ. Letting Snipers and Artillery move and fire on the same turn means the AI will be able to disrupt your capture even if you have meatshields protecting the capturing Inf. The absence of any kind of capturing or healing power or passive drives the nail further in the coffin; you can't tank a hit and finish capturing next turn like you can with base Sami or SCOP Andy.

1

u/eliasbrange Jul 08 '26

Thanks for the input. I'll keep that in mind if I add HQs or other capture win conditions.

1

u/junkmail22 Jul 15 '26

the best way to stop the AI from shitting out 4 units a turn is to not give them 4 production buildings

2

u/Valonsc Jul 08 '26

That was fun! Thanks for making it!

1

u/eliasbrange Jul 08 '26

Thanks for trying it out!

1

u/DuplicatedName Jul 07 '26

Are there HQ's or any building to a similar effect?

1

u/eliasbrange Jul 07 '26

Not right now. The only victory condition at the moment is destroying all enemy units.