The year is 1944. Most of continental Europe is still under German rule, and only a decisive invasion by the Allies can change that. That action took place in June 1944 in the form of Operations Overlord and Bagration.
Battleplan puts you in a map room after the Normandy landings, and your job is simple enough: draw some arrows on the map for your subordinates to follow. If you do it right, the war could be over by Christmas. Get it wrong, however, and thousands of families will receive death notices in the mail.
Canadian developer Foolish Mortals Games Inc. you know strategy games that focus on planning. The team had dipped its toes into the world of map battles back in 2020 with Radio General, but the scale it had to handle was nowhere near that of Battleplan.
You are put in command of multiple divisions, with areas of operation so large that success or failure has a significant impact on the outcome of the war. It’s a stressful business, and it’s not for everyone (something the game reminds you of a dozen times), but Battleplan scratches the surface that most strategy games don’t.
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I started following Battleplan from the day it was announced. Having spent a fair amount of time looking at conflict maps during my time in geopolitical newsrooms, I’ve always felt that many good strategy games were very lacking in the way they presented information to players.
You often have to choose between displaying a different unit in real-time strategy games or controlling the map alone in good strategy. When pressed to choose between the two, I always prefer a more tactical view down, but it would be nice to have that and also be able to issue complex orders beyond “go here, shoot this” and see map change control.
Battleplan tries to combine this into a single game, and while it nails the assignment for the most part, there are some struggles to get into the scope.
Boot camp
The campaign in the preview begins with D-Day dress rehearsals in England, and I found the scaling to be sufficient even for complete beginners. Rather than throwing all thirty orders in your head at once, you learn what each one does one by one, gradually working your way up to a complete set of orders.
Traditionally, strategy games give you live command of units, and you can react to situations as they arise. This is fine if you are the commander of a mobile infantry unit, but in high places, your job is to make a plan and let your officers do it, instead of interfering.
If you do it right, the war could be over by Christmas. Get it wrong, however, and thousands of families will receive death notices in the mail.
At the beginning of each day, you get a planning section to draw and write down instructions for your sections. After that, it’s up to them. In some cases, you can command the units to wait for a signal or set a time to do something, but for the most part, you’re just watching your program play after that.
When things get too intense, you also have the button to have your officers make complex defensive plans or offensive plans. A coward’s way, I mean.
The campaign in Battleplan is about historical battles, so it was nice to see the option to ride with historical units or build your own army based on the points on offer. If you choose the latter, the state of your units is saved between missions, which gives a nice sense of continuity. However, I am partial to historical mode as it means working with what is available and not what you would like to have.
Trial by Fire
For the most part, the journey is deceptively simple: capture this objective, defend that one, treat the wounded, control the area, you get the gist of it. What I enjoyed is that Battleplan doesn’t care how you make it, and how big the maps are, you can be as creative as you want when making these plans.
Take the battle of Caen, for example. He is placed in command of the British and Canadian contingent after taking control of the Bayoux and linking up with the 6th Airborne Division. All the game asks is to hold on to the Bayoux until more troops arrive from the beaches, then move to capture the virtual fortress of Caen.
Can you pull all your troops back to the Bayoux and hold? Yes, if you like a good siege. Can you stop your army and zerg rush Caen? Of course. You can also bang your head against the wall and get the same results.
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The two most effective options would be to strike hard and fast to capture the logistical hubs of Vire in the south and Lisieux in the east, or to lay siege to Caen and roll over the weak defenders.
I’m a risk-averse player in most tactical games, and the idea of managing these two objectives while keeping the German forces at Caen pinned down felt like going too far.
You also have a button for your officers to create complex defensive or offensive plans for you. A coward’s way, I mean.
Therefore, the plan was to leave the 50th Infantry Division holding a deep defense near the Bayoux, while the other units worked on shaping operations before pressing the siege of Caen.
The British infantry division would force the Orne River and be delayed in the marshes on its right bank, while the 6th Airborne and Canadian infantry divisions would drive south and towards Caen to pin down the German forces while awaiting reinforcements.
Electing to keep our only piece of artillery as a mobile reserve, I launched an attack to help prevent any breakthrough.
Everything might sound busy, but in the game, it just looks like a few arrows and lines, the way most generals can see it. The beauty of Battleplan is in its simplicity, even if the game sometimes betrays itself.
The Debrief
Battles flow well in Battleplan, and while the default view has some interface bloat, it’s a manageable experience overall. The same cannot be said for what happens between missions, however.
The mechanic of the army builder is fairly standard at the highest level: you get general strength, and you can use points to force the application a little or recruit a complete formation. The application system would have worked better as a button to fill the loss in exchange for a few points.
Another important part of Battleplan is the police. Each of these honorable gentlemen has a personality style and characteristics that affect the units they attach to. The system could have been perfect there, but the developer thought it would deal with a poor RPG skill tree. You can ignore it, of course, but it feels alien to a well-planned game.
In the end, that sums up most of the problems I’ve encountered with Battleplan: sometimes complex bits that you can happily look past because, once the battle starts, things work as they should. Sure, I wish the armor was more powerful, and the plane felt more compressed, but the main takedown and holddown mechanics are better executed than most games out there at this scale.
The Battleplan demo is available as part of this Steam Next Fest (February 23rd-March 2nd), and if you have even a passing interest in strategy games or military history, this game is a must-play. The fact that no two missions play the same sets this up as an incredibly playable title, and one that should leave its mark once the developers have finished polishing it.
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