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Greetings, cadet! It is three years since you entered the Star Academy. Your talents show you to be an excellent leader, and you're assured of a bright future commanding an elite squad of troops in missions of the utmost subtlety and importance. Your period of training is nearing its end, and soon you will be ready to go out into the field.  All you need to do to qualify is to complete a number of missions in the combat simulator. Once you've completed these missions to an acceptable standard, your graduation is assured!

The combat simulator will provide you with a squad of four units, and assign you to one of a number of missions. On successful completion of each mission you will be given a score. You need to maximise your scores across all mission types in order to graduate, starting at the easiest level and progressing to the most difficult. No graduate has ever achieved 100% in all missions, but you should try to get as close to that as possible.

You can opt to be dealt random missions, with random units. Or you can select the mission yourself, and if you like, hand pick the unit types that you will command. You'll get more details on this process later. Good luck!

Star Cadre: Combat Class is a tactical combat game, a kind of strategy game with role-playing game elements. You take on the role of a cadet taking their final practical leadership examinations. Each game consists of a single mission on the combat simulator

Scores are collected on table listing the highest score for each mission for each difficulty level. The object across multiple games is to try to get the best score you can for each mission at Easy level, before progressing to Fair and Hard levels for an extra challenge. Each game is quite short, and progress can be saved, making this an ideal game for a coffee break.

StatusReleased
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(2 total ratings)
AuthorCyningstan
GenreStrategy
Tags2D, cga, DOS, MS-DOS, Retro, Sci-fi, Tactical, Top-Down, Turn-based

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

Star Cadre: Combat Class for DOS 93 kB
Star Cadre: Combat Class manual 698 kB

Development log

Comments

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(+1)

Fantastic game once again! I ran into a few confusing moments but each time I found the right menu item after a little searching. The addition of the manual is really nice, especially the in-universe introduction.

At first I thought the menu system was going to be quite clunky, but the shortcut keys really speed things up to the point where the game just flows so nicely. Being able to heal unconscious squad members back to consciousness, recruiting hostages and looting fallen enemies to turn them into full soldiers - so much more depth than I'd initially expected.

I understand the '20 minute session' idea but I can't help but want a slightly more fleshed out version. The scoreboard definitely adds replayability but I'm emotionally invested in Medic Usteme's career and would love to carry units across missions. Still, it's better to be left wanting more than to be bored, and I definitely wasn't bored

Thanks for the kind comment!

The menu system is inspired by that of Battle Isle 2, holding fire while selecting the option. Since the default is context sensitive, it means you can just tap fire to do the most likely option (move when pointing to an adjacent empty square, heal when pointing to an adjacent injured colleague, attack when pointing at an enemy, etc). But the shortcuts are useful when the thing you want to do *isn't* the default option.

This particular game is just a proof of concept for the tactical combat engine. I hope to make other games in the Star Cadre series with a variety of campaign modes. So in future you might be able to take Medic Usteme's career further.

(+1)

So awesome! We had to cover it for BrewOtaku #003

Cool, thank you! I look forward to BrewOtaku #003 coming out!

(+1)

We too. Areeba from the Team will provide you with a copy of the article, once the issue has gone to the printing facility. Thanks for still taking care of DOS :-)

Thanks! I'm intending to buy the digital version of the whole next issue once it's out. I bought issue #002 and I'm enjoying that at the moment.

(+1)

Soon ;) The digital version needs clickable links. By mentioning and featuring more than 120 games this is quite some work. And we don't want to mess anything up :)