Toy Soldiers HD Brings Little Figures and Big Ambitions

Toy Soldiers HD, an upcoming port and enhanced edition of a 2010 XBLA title, is months away. TechRaptor had a chance to sit down and chat with Brett Gow, EP for Toy Soldiers HD, about what changes can be expected.


Published: June 11, 2021 1:00 PM /

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Toy Soldiers HD Preview Image

Toy Soldiers is back with Toy Soldiers HD, a remaster of the game to run on the current offering of consoles. A game that was originally one of the breakout hits of the early Xbox LIVE Arcade Games, as well as a generally well-received title all around, Toy Soldiers is a Real-Time-Strategy game with Tower Defense elements. Recreating battles from World War I, players would place down their units and then take control of them around the battlefield to get deep into the action.

I had a chance this week to sit down with Brett Gow, executive producer for Toy Soldiers HD, to talk about just how much is coming to this HD collection. Toy Soldiers HD will be coming to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. For the franchise, this is the first being on a Nintendo console, and while the sequels released on PlayStation systems, this is the first time the original game will be playable on a PlayStation platform. This HD remaster will also include the two DLC packs that released with the original game, The Kaiser's Battle and Invasion!. Gow talked about when having to play and test the game you think "wow, there's actually a lot to play here. Until you sit down and really play through it and have to test it there's a lot."

Toy Soldiers HD Artillery

Through the campaign, you'll get access to all kinds of tanks, planes, and standing structures like mounted turrets to try to protect your Toybox. The player can hop into each of these different units taking control, if you feel the AI just isn't cutting it, and if you need a bit more protection then you can take over a plane and start doing sweeps trying to take out your enemy's units.

One of the really great parts of this Toys Soldier HD isn't just that the development team got it running at a larger resolution and added more detailed textures but added to the overall experience now that it's running on machines with more horsepower. Gow took time to highlight a number of other changes that they're making, like allowing more army men and units to be on screen as well as giving players increased freedom in their ability to place units. Toy Soldier HD is using all of the available overhead and really bringing this title to the current generation of consoles.

There's so much more action happening on the screen. [...] Each one of the campaign levels now has a survival component that you can unlock for that level and play over and over again

It was also explained that it wasn't as simple as just allowing more to happen on screen, but while playing and defeating enemies, you accrue currency so the entire game had to be rebalanced around not flooding the players with money to spend on more units. In addition to that, new harder difficulties have been added to the game. One of these includes a German-themed night level where the ground is covered by fog.

There will be nine different multiplayer levels with opportunities for a number of strategies. Private match also has a ton of different options allowing you to really cater to how you want to play. While there was some investigation into crossplay functionality, it was dropped as developers chose to focus on improving and expanding upon the experience of the first game. "Our focus is always going to be on the gameplay because gameplay wins out" is how Gow reasoned it, and I couldn't agree more.

Toy Soldiers HD Flamethrower

At the moment there's no more definitive date for release than the previously announced August 2021, but Gow let me know they're preparing to announce the release date soon. For those of you out there who remember and enjoyed Toy Soldiers when it first released on Xbox Live Arcade, it seems with Toy Soldiers HD you're not just going to get the same game, but more of what you enjoy. TechRaptor would like to thank again Brett Gow for taking the time to talk with us about this upcoming title.

If you want to check out more of TechRaptor's E3 2021 and related summer event coverage check out https://techraptor.net/topic/e3-2021

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