An airport, of all places, is supposed to show you the horrors of war at first hand. We have received many new details from the developers about the building strategy mix.
The Second World War is truly not an unused scenario in games. At times at the beginning of the millennium, it felt like there was no game that relied on a different setting, and after taking a breather for several years, this historical time frame now seems to be coming back into fashion.
Ground of Aces is no exception, but it has a special feature up its sleeve: you are not sent to the front! Instead, the action takes place primarily at a single location, namely at an airport. We found out first-hand from the developer Blindflug Studios why this unusual scenario was chosen and what gameplay finesse awaits you.
Building to grow
In Ground of Aces you are responsible for all matters at the historic airport. You construct buildings from individual construction elements, ensure the supply of goods, maintain the aircraft and also take care of the people on the grounds. According to Jeremy Spillmann, it is above all the latter that make the scenario so appealing to the development team.
Airfields, especially in World War II, are a super exciting topic. It”s a community built around close crews who know each other well personally and often make do with very meagre equipment
In order to expand your base, you will not only need money, but many other resources that come from various sources. Some of the raw materials you can collect yourself, such as wood from the surrounding forests or fruit from cultivated fields, which you can trade in the nearby village.
But the headquarters will also regularly send you a delivery of goods. You have to use them cleverly, after all, there is a war going on and you must not only keep an eye on the here and now, but also make provisions for a rainy day.
You will also need the resources to build historically accurate aircraft To unlock the blueprints for the machines, you must complete missions given to you by HQ. The faster you complete the missions successfully, the more honour points you will receive, which you can invest in new aircraft.
New aircraft allow you to take on new optional missions that require special equipment, such as night missions behind enemy lines.
Planning to Survive
You also need to invest in the people who work and live at the airport. The common togetherness in the oppressive times of war is supposed to play a big role in Ground of Aces. That”s why you can not only prepare your military base for emergencies, but also decorate it and make it more homely, which, according to Jeremy Spillmann, should offer playful advantages:
If you manage to create spaces that are good for the morale of your crews and pilots, they will be better mentally prepared before missions or recover faster from shocks caused by attacks or losses. At the same time, players should not spend all their time and resources on this. So it will be a tactical consideration how much to invest in it, even besides cosmetics.
According to Spillmann, however, morale will not only affect your airbase, but also the civilian population in the nearby village:
Morale will be a big issue. Whether desertion is directly a possibility is still to be decided, but an important part of the game will be how the war affects not only the morale of the base, but also the nearby village. So you will not only have to worry about your own people, but possibly the civilian population nearby
You have a completely free hand when planning your base. Even when building, your ambitions are only limited by your available resources. How the buildings look in the end is left to your imagination.
This sounds tempting at first, but it also increases the demands of the game. It is up to you to decide in which direction your airport will develop. Would you rather have a secure bulwark that is slow to get going, or a highly efficient site that is hardly protected at all?
Failure to move on
You should never take the issue of security lightly. Because no matter how you go about developing your airport:One day the enemy will attack! The bombardment of your base should not only get under your skin atmospherically, but also take on a central role in the gameplay.
Suddenly, facilities that you have worked hard to build are destroyed. People die whom you saw dancing at the bar just a few minutes before. Expensive planes are scattered in pieces across the area.
This moment should not tempt you to give up, quite the opposite. Rather, the wreckage of your creation represents an opportunity to emerge stronger from the tragedy:
The attacks should, of course, be something that hurts. Especially when residents of your airport die or lovingly decorated structures are bombed. But dealing with this also means learning from how real air bases dealt with it at the time: Build strategic targets further apart, secure crew structures with air defences, camouflage bomb storage and much more. This makes structures safer, but comes at the cost of efficiency, because everything is built far apart
You won”t be able to go into battle yourself, though. Ground of Aces aims to maintain the unusual angle on the terrible war from the beginning to the end of a game. This means that you will certainly prepare attacks on the enemy, but you will not intervene in the action yourself. Or to put it in the words of Jeremy Spillmann:
As a base commander, your impact on battles is what you do before the battles: do you have the right aircraft? Are the pilots well trained? Are they mentally ready? Has the technology been properly maintained? All this and more affects the chances of your squadrons. But once they”re in the air, you”ll have to worry about whether they”ll come home again just as much as everyone else who”s been left behind in such cases.
Play to learn
In terms of scope, Blindflug Studios plans to cater to both professionals and genre newcomers. That is, there is to be a tutorial, but the heart of the game is the endless mode. And Endless
is apparently to be taken literally here, because if you want, you should be able to continue expanding your airport beyond World War II.
In addition, with the so-called Theatre Campaigns
special scenarios are planned that cover short historical periods. An example given is the Battle of Britain between July and October 1940, which includes special and historically accurate events such as night bombardments
Thus, those with a penchant for history should get their money”s worth, and those who are less knowledgeable in this area can learn something while playing.
Waiting to play
Now that you”ve learned so much about Ground of Aces, you might be itching to check it out for yourself. But it will still be some time before you can try the game out.
The team is currently busy completing an alpha version of the game, which Kickstarter backers can test at a certain contribution level, probably at the end of 2023. Ground of Aces will then be released to the public for the first time in autumn 2024 – but initially only as an Early Access version.
Steam release and Kickstarter funding: If what you”ve read so far appeals to you and you want to keep an eye on Ground of Aces, you can add (the game on Steam) to your wishlist. And if you”re already convinced enough that you want to participate financially as a backer, you can still make this a reality on Kickstarter until 2 June 2023:
Are you convinced by the game concept of Ground of Aces? Do you have any other questions that are burning under your nails? Or does the idea of managing an airport instead of fighting directly on the front line not entice you? Whatever your thoughts on the subject, feel free to post them in the comments!
(Go to the Ground of Aces Kickstarter Page)
Editor”s verdict
I”ve been playing strategy games on the PC since early childhood, but in recent years I”ve hardly bothered with the virtual battlefields. Somehow I always had the feeling that I had seen and played everything somewhere before.
Ground of Aces, on the other hand, immediately aroused my interest with its unconventional idea of transporting me to an airport in the Second World War. It”s clear that the day-to-day warfare will mainly be about building better and better planes. But especially the complementary focus on human fates appeals to me.
A completely free building mode without fixed building rules? Decorating my base to boost the morale of my staff? The terrifying moment when I have to pick myself up again after an enemy attack and rise like a phoenix from the ashes? On paper, Ground of Aces sounds like a tremendously exciting build-up strategy mix.
However, I retain a healthy portion of residual scepticism. Because so far, apart from a few pictures and a trailer, there is not much to see of the game. And as great as the developers” vision may sound, it first has to be realised without cutting back on some of the features.
But I will definitely keep an eye on Ground of Aces. The title has the best chance of becoming the first strategy game in a long time that I”ll spend a lot of time on again!
