Tooth and Tail — the RTS designed for the gamepad — is coming to PS4! Lead the animal revolution with an army of flamethrowing boars, mustard gas-lobbing skunks, and a fighting force of WWI-era beasts.

Hold on a sec… lemme introduce myself. I’m Andy Schatz, Creative Director at Pocketwatch Games. Our last release was a co-op heist game called Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine. Monaco was notable for its simple controls and chaotic heists.

Tooth and Tail approaches the RTS genre with a similar design vision: as the Flagbearer for your army of animals, you use a single button to rally your minions into battle. The game is incredibly easy to pick up and play, but is endlessly complex.

Having trouble picturing it? I’ll describe two scenarios for you.

The New Recruits

You like Strategy games, but you don’t feel good enough to play them online. Your BFF has never played an RTS, but is totally willing to play split-screen games with you. You pick up Tooth and Tail, starting with the Story Mode.

Playing as the leader of the Longcoats, Arroyo Bellafide, you build a fortress of defensive emplacements and lead a squadron of drunken squirrels into battle.

Your bestie watches as you recruit Kasha the sniper Fox, and says, “Hey, this looks like fun! Is it easy to play?” It sure is. Next thing you know, you are playing split-screen co-op late into the night.

The Grandmaster

You’re godlike at Starcraft and you’ve played 1,000 hours of Age of Empires. You are skeptical that a gamepad-RTS can have truly deep strategy. You jump straight into the Arena, Tooth and Tail’s online competitive mode. Between the randomly generated maps and the customizable factions, you find that every match you play is entirely different.

In one match, you sneak-attack over a hill with a fleet of dog-fighting Falcons. In another, you build an explosive Toad army to go knock on their front door.

It isn’t long before you realise that this “distilled” RTS isn’t simple at all. It’s ENDLESS.

We’ve been playing Tooth and Tail with a group of private alpha testers for three years now. Some of them were total noobs, others were hardcore gamers. The scenarios I described above have already happened.

Come talk to us!

If you are curious and want to chat with the developers:

I’m super hyped to bring the game to PlayStation Store and I hope you’ll follow Tooth and Tail’s development on Twitter as we roll towards launch. See you on the battlefield!