I'm interested in buying the game now to learn the Lancer TTRPG system, but also just to check it out - looks cool. This would be my first time buying a game on this platform - what happens when the game's 1.0 release hits? Does the full game become available to me as an update, a download, or how does that work?

Once you buy a game on itch.io, you can download it and any future updates from the project page. If you use the itch.io app, it will work much like Steam where it can apply patches for you automatically, but if you buy and download it via browser you’ll have to redownload the whole game manually whenever there’s an update.

Lancer Tactics saves user data outside of the game folder, so you can delete old versions of the game without losing your mechs/pilots/maps.

We’re planning on bringing LT to Steam later this year, but I’m committed to keeping the itch.io versions up-to-date with whatever versions we release there. I’m hoping we can make steam keys available to whoever buys it on itch beforehand, but as discussed here I’m not 100% on being able to do so, so if Steam is essential for you I recommend you hold off.

Let me know if you have any more questions about it :)

Thank you for the reply! I'll download the itch.io app and check it out. Would you say that playing the game is a good way to learn the TTRPG rules?

That’s our goal! There’s a tutorial that will introduce you to the rhythm of combat. The biggest differences we had to make for the adaptation is having a action “points” and flying being a status, but it functionally plays almost the same.

Chiming in to say it's been a FANTASTIC teacher for the game as someone that started playing on tabletop weekly. Not everything is there, yet, but if you've got the cash it's absolutely worth it to support a small fan project that does what it says on the tin.