PanacheA drone game repainted in 1900
Panache didn’t start from a blank page, but from an open-source strategy game by Simon Willison. In two days, its drones became airships.
Panache is the only one of my games that doesn’t start from scratch. It starts from Battle Drones, a small real-time strategy game that Simon Willison released under an open-source licence (Apache 2.0). A solid simulation, an AI that builds, harasses and then attacks, fog of war, controls designed for a finger.
On 21 October, I repainted the whole thing in Belle Époque style. Brass 3D models, portraits, a cinematograph title screen with an intro film, the six maps redone, the French translation. And an announcer who shouts “PANACHE!” when the logo arrives.
The next day, two nations, the Republic and the Empire of Carbonia, each with its own units, coats of arms and voices, and the 1900 Campaign: twelve missions, with silent film title cards shown between them.
Then the less visible part, which matters just as much: a proper strategy game home screen, 44-pixel touch targets, routes you draw with your finger, and a mission, “The Granite Coast”, where the Captain used to get shot down in his own base.
Simon made the engine, I made the world. The credit is on the game’s page, and it will stay there.