Neon and Napalm

 

Klotzen Panzer Battles: World War 2 Strategy That re-writes The History Books

Independent developer Maxim Games today announced their debut title, Klotzen! Panzer Battles, a World War 2 turn based operational strategy game utilizing a hex based map system, is available now on PC via Steam with a 10% launch discount available until May 4th. 

Offering up countless outcomes to real life historical military campaigns through different scenarios, strategy game fans will have the opportunity to completely rewrite the history books. Players and budding strategists will be able to affect historical timelines and outcomes, from initiating the allied invasion of Normandy a year earlier in 1943, or even executing successful assaults on London or the USA. Klotzen! Panzer Battles offers up 26 historical, and close to 40 counterfactual scenarios, along with the random campaign-changing events. Players can also customize their own historical scenarios with the games built in editor.

Fans of games like Panzer Corps 2 or Hearts of Iron IV will be very at home with the offering here. Maxim Games has been working on Klotzen Panzer Battles for the last 4 years and has paid close attention to what is already offered by competitor WW2 strategy games.

Where Klotzen looks to shake things up is in three key areas

1. Improved AI, which makes the game more challenging/fun.
   
2. Improved air power set of mechanics/rules, that brings the whole gameplay a lot closer to reality, drastically increases importance of air power and gives the player numerous interesting strategies unique to Klotzen.
3. Branching campaign, with lots of what-if(alt-history) scenarios and events that increases replayability a lot.

With so much content and variation to how missions and campaigns can be played this should keep armchair generals pretty busy, the fact that this also contains counter-factual missions like invading the USA or bringing forward the Normandy invasion of France to 1943 are fun 'what if' scenarios to play out.

The game features some nicely detailed units too which presents the game with a decently presented look and feel. With air, land and sea power available for players to diversify their tactics, and more than enough campaigns and resources to utilize, this looks like it could be a very viable alternative to other WW2 hex based strategy games that have launched in recent years including the likes of Unity of Command.

Klotzen Panzer Battles is currently available on Steam for PC (no linux version to speak of and not current Steam Deck tested) but you can find out more about the game here.