W is for Will WARCOM: Fortress Europe need interesting battlefields and solid AI to realise its full potential? While it’s impossible not to be excited by Broke Protocol’s vision and ambition (the dev aims to fuse traditional WW2 hex operational wargaming with turnless tactical 3D battle orchestration) the simplicity of the scenery visible in Warcom’s trailer raises the spectre of tactical insipidity.
V is for Very hexy. Today’s round-up is heavy on the honeycomb. All four games mentioned below either insist military units capable of moving due North and South are incapable of moving due East and West, or military units capable of moving due East and West are incapable of moving due North and South. As commentators that harp on about this distracting genre quirk have a nasty habit of disappearing without trace or perishing in mysterious accidents, I’d like to point out, personally I have no problem whatsoever with hexagonal movement.
U is for Unlikely combination of UBOAT and Papers, Please. Of the three sub games mentioned in today’s dispatch, False Echo is the hardest to classify. An in-development solo project from a dev who previously worked on franchises such as Blitzkrieg and Men of War, FE will cast us as U-boat cryptography officers in a not-quite-WW2 conflict. Inside the game’s side-on convoy molesters, the Kapitan might call the shots, but as it’s the player that decides, with the help of an Enigmatic cipher device, which incoming orders end up in his hands, it sounds like we’re going to have considerable…
Roman blew the dust off his 1952 Lugg & Lewis vulpograph yesterday. The result is a trad geofoxer with a ********* flavour. Below the break you’ll also find a Vera-style brainteaser set by a reader. Veteran defoxer Aergistal challenges you to geo-locate a stretch of blacktop that starred in an iconic 90s game cinematic.
P is for Periscopic peak. Purchasers of Modern Naval Warfare, a military-grade modern sub sim due to enter Early Access later today, will encounter a learning curve shaped like “a mountain not a hill”. Publishers Matrix Games have taken the unusual step of filling an entire Steam page post with home truths about their potential Dangerous Waters displacer. A 200-page manual, time-consuming engagements, an interface “crowded with acronyms” and “designed for functionality and realism, not necessarily ease of use”… you can’t say you weren’t warned.
J is for Judicious jugular slicing. If the Red Recon: 1944 trailer (see below) tempts, try the demo while you can. Available until Thursday, the single-mission taster for Varangs’ upcoming Commandos-like launches in Russian. Tap this menu button to access language selection.
E is for Exceptionally elastic engine. No-one could accuse Lado B da História of lacking ambition. The Brazilian YouTubers behind a library of short WW2 history documentaries are working on a wargame-cum-visualisation tool able to sim warfare of all eras. War Room: Tactical Sandbox’s tantalising trailer raises as many questions as it answers. How will this João-of-all-conflicts handle fog-of-war, weather, and line-of-sight? Will the AI be sufficiently lithe and sophisticated to offer realism and challenge in a multitude of time-frames?
Ask an AI about the risks of developing games with AI assistance, and it will probably mention ethical, PR, and legal issues, quality control implications, and the possibility of producing a plaything that’s short on character or fun. What it may not mention are the following hazards.