2023 Quarter Two Update

Hi all,

Well, that’s a wrap on Quarter Two, we are already in the second half of the year!

We shared everything we had achieved between January and March in our 2023 Quarter One Update. If you missed it, you can get up to speed, reading that blog post here.

Before launching into this update, we would like to thank everyone who supported us during our recent WDS Summer Sale. These events are really important for keeping us afloat and it’s a win-win with the community getting a significant discount off our regular pricing.

For the first time in a long time, we released two games only months apart.

Like Panzer Campaigns Philippines ’44, Musket & Pike Great Northern War was released to very positive feedback and has sold well in the weeks since. It is pleasing to see the support for a relatively unknown conflict outside of Scandinavia. Europe was very different to today, with Sweden a dominant force in the north with imperial ambitions. Great Northern War is the first of a range of conflicts that are planned to use the revamped Musket & Pike engine. You can expect some fascinating titles in the future.  For those uncertain about Great Northern War, we included some background in the preview blog post here.

Great Northern War was our first version 4.02 Musket and Pike release. The other two titles, Renaissance and Seven Years War were subsequently updated, receiving many of the enhancements included in the recent release. The details on the changes and where to get the updates are listed in this blog post.

April to June was another big quarter for updates. We, at WDS have been slowly aligning feature sets across the various game series. The ‘new’ button and menu User Interface is available in nearly all series and new features such as Game Action Speed control and Roaming mode are also being rolled out. These features are designed to make it easier for players to ‘pick-up’ a new series without the need to learn a new game interface.

The first updates for the quarter for Civil War Battles, Early American Wars and the WDS Menu program were released and described in this blog post. The updates for Civil War Battles are particularly significant. With the release of Forgotten Campaigns back in November 2021, this series was deemed finished. As of the start of this year, all programming for this series passed from Berto across to Henrik who has subsequently adding features that had been included in the Napoleonic series. You can expect aligned quality of life improvements across all the pre-twentieth century titles as they become available. Berto owns Panzer Battles, Panzer Campaigns, Modern Campaigns and First World War Campaigns and is currently prototyping a new AI engine that we hope can be introduced across all game series in the future. There is a long way to go in this area though.

As mentioned in our First Quarter review,  Campaign Waterloo and the Final Struggle Demo were updated to version 4.05 as a precursor to the rest of the Napoleonic series being enhanced. The whole series were updated to version 4.06 in May with yet another slew of changes. There is a lot to read about here.

Probably the biggest series of updates was the 4.01 release for Squad Battles. This series had been in its original form since WDS acquired the Tiller portfolio of titles and it has definitely been a labor of love to get these into your hands. Four of the sixteen titles have been updated, with the three Eastern Front titles upgraded first and the Grenada Demo soon after. You can read about each of these releases here and here. There was also a preview article that highlighted the Visual Orders of Battle that are free for anyone that was interested. For those wondering when the remaining games will be updated, we ask for patience. The graphics and data load are very significant for each title, and we are chipping away currently. We don’t want to commit publicly until we are confident we have a title close to done.

Rich Hamilton shared a How to Play WDS Games article highlighting all the game modes available. There are differences across series, and it helps to ensure all players are aware of their choices.

We have also restarted our WDS YouTube channel. You are all going to get used to hearing the dulcet tones of Rich Walker who has started creating new content with gusto. Rich is a long term WDS developer (check the Civil War Battles credits) and we are thankful he wanted to add more videos. Rich’s first new video was for Philippines ’44, in this post. An introduction to Musket & Pike, Great Northern War is also available.

We are lucky to add the third new video covering an introduction to Squad Battles Red Victory below:

Please feel free to leave your comments good or bad regarding these videos so we can continue to refine the content available.

It has been a busy second quarter with a lot of new content and updates across a range of series. Things are not slowing down though, and we are announcing the next Panzer Campaigns title that we hope to release before the end of the year.

Panzer Campaigns Orel ’43 is the second title from Dani Asensio following on from Panzer Campaigns Rumyantsev ’43. These titles are two of the planned three stand-alone games covering the Soviet offensives in the south, during the Summer of 1943. This image shows the relationship between the Orel ’43 and Rumyantsev ’43 map on our current master map for the series.

Orel ’43 is focused on Operation Kutuzov, the Soviet response to Army Group Center’s attack at Kursk in July 1943. Like Operation Rumyantsev against Army Group South, the Soviets viewed the attack as the continuation of the Battle of Kursk with the Russians moving to the offensive. The battle resulted in the fall of Orel and retreat of German forces, but not before a blunting of the Soviet armies involved.

In addition to Kutuzov, a new take on the German attack on Kursk by Army Group Center is included. This mirrors the Army Group South scenario included in Rumyantsev ’43. All in all, 57 scenarios are currently in testing. Here are a few screenshots from the upcoming title, we will share more as we approach release.

We have a lot going on and looking back over the last three months we are happy with what has been achieved. Its not slowing down in the third quarter!