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Now that we’ve funded you can help us tear through these stretch goals. We’ve passed self-propelled artillery and with your help we’re on our way to St Mere Eglise!Â
You’ve never played World War 2 the way it was meant to be played… with lumbering tanks dominating the battlefield, crucial supply chains fueling the frontlines, being a cog in the machine of colossal combined arms warfare. Hell Let Loose puts you in the chaos of war, complete with deep player-controlled vehicles, a dynamically evolving frontline, and crucial platoon-focused gameplay that commands the tide of battle. This is a simulation of war… not an arcade arena shooter.Â
On paper, Hell Let Loose is a realistic multiplayer World War Two combined arms first person shooter of open battles of up to 100 players with infantry, tanks, artillery and a shifting front line. At it’s core is a unique resource-based strategic meta-game that is easy to learn, but hard to master.
Built on Unreal Engine 4 for Windows and distributed via Steam, read on to discover why our World War Two title stands apart from the competition:
Featuring sweeping 4km² maps, the entire battlefield is divided up into large cap sectors – allowing for emergent and constantly unique gameplay that pits two forces of fifty players in a fight to the death across fields, bridges, forests and towns on an ever-evolving front line. When a sector is captured, it will generate one of three resources for your team, creating a complex meta-game that will influence your team’s march to victory.
Do you push to capture the enemy fuel depot, depriving them of the ability to reinforce their vehicles faster? Or do you defend your munitions depot, allowing you to continue a brutal naval bombardment? Do you flank and take several sectors in an effort to starve them of infantry reinforcements? Each decision at every level will affect your team’s fighting power and ability in the field.
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We feel the crowdfunding fatigue as much as you do. As backers of several enormous and ambitious projects that never lived up to the hype, we decided that we would only begin our Kickstarter campaign once we had a playable client from end to end. That means launching the application, connecting to a server and actually playing the game at an Alpha level of quality. We’re thrilled that we can do all those things, and that all funds from this Kickstarter will go towards fleshing out and widening the scope of what we feel is already a deep experience.
As a team of realism and World War Two fans, we’ve always found there to be a profound lack of innovation in the first person shooter genre. Each World War Two game is either a run-and-gun blockbuster that places self-progression first and teamwork last, or it’s a remake of a classic title.
We have always felt that the genre could be pushed so much further – incorporating vehicles, open world battlefields, deployable fortifications, teamwork and realism all wrapped up in the beautiful graphics of a modern engine. This is not a World War Two title of last decade.
We’re removing all the modern gameplay incentives that we feel focus the entire experience back onto the individual. How many kills can you get? What perks did you unlock? Which gun did you unlock? How do you build a team-play based game on a foundation in which all players actively want to succeed alone? This seemed very counterintuitive to us, as successful warfare is waged only as a coordinated force.
When reading veterans accounts of battle throughout history, there is a profound selflessness and camaraderie in fight for the men at your side. To reframe this modern day game design, we’re placing all emphasis on a team victory. But how is victory achieved?
Using teamwork and communication, players work together in Platoons beneath the leadership of Officers and the force Commander. Using historically accurate weapons, logistics, armour and tactics, Hell Let Loose is a game that demands teamwork and communication not only to win, but to survive.
Surprisingly, the majority of infantry in World War Two were not sniper rifle wielding tank hunters. Each man was given a role, many of them in limited quantities with limited equipment and training.
In Hell Let Loose, players will be able to play as one of 13 roles – each resembling an historical counterpart with the same ammunition count, equipment and capabilities.
Did you just capture an important fuel sector? Radio for a driver to bring up some supply crates. Your Engineer can begin mining the road before establishing a machine gun nest and several layers of sandbags encircling a Pak 40 anti-tank gun. Your Officer can place his Observation Post in a farmyard at the rear to reinforce the position. Suddenly, the sunken lane has been turned into a kill-zone.
The Engineer and Officer roles will have the ability to deploy and build a wide variety of fixed emplacement weapons, classic defences and mine fields that will last until they’re destroyed or disarmed.
The first theatre of war is the sleepy Norman town of St Marie Du Mont on D-Day, 1944.
Located in northern France during Operation Overlord, it features a stunning and detailed 1:1 scale battlefield recreated from archival reference material and satellite photography.
Players will organise and muster behind the front lines before carefully pushing forward into the French countryside towards the town. They will need to establish supply lines using logistics vehicles – enabling them to build Garrisons and other spawn locations in the field.
Armor and infantry must work together to smash through the front line and capture territory – pushing the enemy back and earning greater resources to sustain their fighting power.
Engineers will lay minefields and barbed wire to create choke points. Sunken lanes become killing zones, while dense woodlands could mask the presence of a devastating Pak 40 – towed into position by a waiting unit of Wehrmacht infantry. Allied infantry call in strafing runs as hedgerows light up with the fire of a Panther tank and the scream of the Hitler’s Buzz Saw – the MG42.                           Â
Deliver supplies to the front in an Opel Blitz supply truck, roll across the fields in a Sherman Firefly, flee a fearsome Panther tank in a Jeep or bombard the enemy position in a Priest. We plan to introduce the full array of vehicles into the game to serve a wide variety of functions.
Our first priority will be the inclusion of Supply and Transport vehicles before we widen the scope to the most prolific vehicles (medium tanks and half tracks) and then introduce interesting variants such as the Sherman Calliope, Puma SdKfz 234 and Tiger II.
Our team is made up of 20 international artists and developers with our core partnership spanning Russia, the United States and Australia.
Will you censor Nazi imagery?
Only in territories where the law states that we must. It is our goal to make an historically accurate game. As such, we will strive to capture the camo schemes, equipment, uniforms and weapons of each of the Wehrmacht and SS formations. We will be releasing a DLC that contains uncensored imagery for all appropriate territories.
Pricing
At present, Hell Let Loose will retail for USD $29.95 when released on Steam Early Access.
Dedicated ServersÂ
Peer-to-peer servers, sluggish netcode and poor server region choice are more fatal than any rifle, grenade or tank round. We’re working with communities around the world to host region-based dedicated servers to ensure low ping and a smooth playing environment.
Gore
We aim to capture the horror of war with the expected damage of modern combat on the human body – including dismemberment, immolation and bullet hits.
Anti-CheatÂ
In a realistic game with minimal HUD, it’s important that players are confident the fighting is fair. We are currently deciding on one of several anti-cheat platforms to integrate into the game before Early Access release.
Why Kickstarter?Â
Until now we’ve worked on the title as a hobby – fuelled only by passion. However, we know that to release Hell Let Loose as a polished final product and within reasonable time we need to ask you, our backers, to help us raise the necessary funds. Our minimum goal (USD $100,000) will allow us to finish the game to full feature-rich quality (as opposed to an Alpha or Beta).
Our Stretch Goals are designed to speed up the development time of planned features that we feel will make a real difference to the player experience. It will also allow us to drastically widen the player experience with some incredible additional features and maps.
We have outlined the approximate breakdown of budget allocation for the base funding goal:
Thanks to your amazing support, we’ve funded!
Our stretch goals are designed to increase the speed of implementation of features in our roadmap. We are very excited to offer as much content as possible before our early access launch. Most of our early stretch goals will mean that content already planned will be able to be introduced earlier if we are able to reach the goal.
A game like ours depends on a strong community with an open, inclusive and helpful culture. Our title is a reflection of those that play it. While signing up at our website will give you all the latest news, please connect with us at our other channels:
Unreal Engine 4 is a complete suite of creation tools designed to meet ambitious artistic visions while being flexible enough to ensure success for teams of all sizes. As an established, industry-leading engine, Unreal delivers powerful proven performance that you can trust.
Here you can see Unreal Engines July 2017Â #EpicFriday Sizzle Reel, that Featured Hell Let Loose.
ATTRIBUTION
Hero’s Theme by Twin Musicom as used in our Kickstarter video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: http://www.twinmusicom.org/song/280/heros-theme
Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org
We’ve been working on this title for more than two years now, and we have a solid base to show for it. The risks we’re facing are development delays and feature creep – there’s just so much we want to do!
To counter this, we will be providing continual development updates across our channels, as well as sticking to a locked list of key feature goals for our respective release dates.
Questions about this project? Check out the FAQ