Naval Campaigns Demo

Greetings fellow wargamers,

Today WDS is pleased to bring you another in our line of free demos. The module in the spotlight today brings you the naval engagements of The Spanish-American War of 1898.

The Naval Campaigns series is a simulation of naval warfare from the late Victorian era to World War II. It consists of a range of games with scenarios based on historical or hypothetical situations. This Demo gives you the chance to learn the interface and get familiar with how to manage surface ship combat.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 marked the rise of one Great Power and the fall of another. This conflict, spurred on by colonial ambitions and the infamous destruction of the USS Maine, was decided at sea in two short and brutally decisive engagements at Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba. With no ability to support their troops abroad, Spain admitted defeat within just five months.

The war took place during a period of unprecedented changes in naval technology and doctrine, with stark differences from one ship to the next. Both sides suffered from a variety of unforeseen challenges, be it from lack of experience or preparedness. In the end, the numerical, qualitative and home-field advantages carried the day for the United States.

But what if events had turned out differently? In addition to the two historical and rather one-sided battles, this game also depicts many hypothetical situations in which commanders made different decisions at key moments or had more resources to work with. Spanish soldiers fought gallantly even with their serious handicaps. When given better tools and tactics, perhaps they could have changed the course of history?

Spanish-American War includes 20 Scenarios – covering all sizes and situations, including a solo tutorial scenario plus specialized versions for both head to head play and vs. the computer AI.

Two expansive maps covering the key coastal theaters of the war: Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba.

The order of battle files cover the Spanish and American forces that participated in the campaign with other formations added in for hypothetical situations.

Design notes which cover or include the production of the game, campaign notes and a bibliography that includes the sources used by the design team to produce this simulation game.

Spanish-American War Naval Battles provides multiple play options including play against the computer AI, LAN & Internet "live" play.

As with all of our demos, this is fulfilling two objectives:

1) Providing you with a free way to test-drive a series so you can get exposure to how the engine operates, what the user interface is like, and read over the documentation to uncover details that may not be readily apparent from the product pages.

2) Cover topics that may not warrant a complete title on their own.

So you all get a free game in addition to us achieving our goals. We say this because the topics presented in the demos are not necessarily representative of the series as a whole. SPAW is no exception - the play experience here isn't giving you a good representation of a full fleet battle like you would get with Jutland, for example -  or carrier operations in Midway - or submarine ops in Wolfpack. It does allow you to get a feel for the engine and explore a topic not too frequently covered - so we believe it's a win-win.

For more screen shots, info or to grab your own copy of this free demo you can visit the product page.

In addition to todays release we have posted an update for Tsushima due to some issues found in this title only, impacting primary gun hits. So we have only incremented the version number to 4.03.1 - instead of bumping up a whole version. You can grab a copy of the update from the Tsushima product page or the series update page.

And as we prepare to sign off for today we leave you with a couple of things to look forward to:

Civil War Battles with begin to receive the 4.03 round of updates in the near future - beginning with Campaign Antietam & the Demo and followed a few weeks later with the rest of the series.

And a week or so later we will begin the roll out of the 4.07 updates for Napoleonic Battles. Campaign Waterloo & the Demo will lead this series and the rest of the titles will follow a few weeks later.

That's a wrap for today, have a good weekend! and we hope you enjoy the demo!