tinyBuild, developers of No Time to Explain and publishers of multiple games from independent studios recently announced that they will publish One Troll Army, a multiplayer defense game developed by Russian studio Fly Anvil. Described as a "merge of Warcraft and Kingdom Rush", One Troll Army promises a very unique feature in its multiplayer element in that the player is directly pitted against the audience of a Twitch livestream.
tinyBuild has become rather known in recent years for its unusual usage of Twitch.tv's livestreaming platform, both for promoting and modifying the content of its games - most recently, the publisher promised to release their 2016 title Punchclub early should a live Twitch audience beat the game using typed-in commands, similar to the Twitch Plays Pokémon livestream event of 2014. Punchclub was later even modified through an official patch to allow Twitch's chat audience to slightly interact with the game, by placing virtual bets on fights during a livestream of the game using its native Twitch integration. tinyBuild appears to have become increasingly comfortable with this precedent in recent times, as indicated by its announcement of Stage Presence, a game where Twitch chat can directly control a crowd within the game to distract the player.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4bRhwEtgO0 Never before has this feature been so directly integrated into a game however than with what has been seen of One Troll Army, which is described as an "experimental multiplayer defense game". In One Troll Army the player is encouraged to livestream the game to an audience that will be given full control of the game's enemies, including their customization and upgrades. The player/livestreamer takes on the role of a large troll, who must continually defend a set area against these waves of enemies - if either party is victorious, they are awarded several upgrade opportunities to carry over into the next round.
While it can be expected that tinyBuild has significant confidence in the project as its publisher, it is of note that the game's developer, Fly Anvil, is primarily known for their work on the development of multiple web-based Flash games, with One Troll Army appearing to be their first venture outside of this medium. One Troll Army doesn't appear to have focused on high fidelity graphics, instead opting for a functional and somewhat stylized look that is customizable by costumes including licensed ones such as ones modeled after stormtroopers from Star Wars
Despite a seemingly imminent release, very few details have been provided on the specific date as of yet - One Troll Army is due to be released exclusively on Steam "in a few weeks", so if you're excited for this game, be sure to be on the lookout for any new information in the coming days.
