Partisans 1941

Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment · Studio: Alter Games · Creator: Vétérans de Silent Storm et Blitzkrieg

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Anecdote

Conceived by Hungarian studio Alter Games and published by Daedalic Entertainment in October 2020, Partisans 1941 transposes the tactical grammar of Commandos to the Belarusian forests under German occupation. The player leads a Soviet partisan cell commanded by political commissar Alexey Zorin, who escaped a prisoner-of-war camp in July 1941. Over the course of around twenty missions, the unit grows to encompass roughly ten fighters with distinct profiles: a former nurse, a German deserter, a peasant veteran of the civil war, a young Jewish telegraph operator who escaped the ghetto. Director Levan Khulordava and his team consulted the memoirs of Sidor Kovpak, Piotr Vershigora and Hervé Loncan to reconstruct authentic partisan doctrine: ambushes on railway lines, sabotage of ammunition factories, recruitment in occupied villages, management of a forest base with supplies, medical care and training. Each mission, lasting between forty minutes and two hours, alternates phases of silent Commandos-style infiltration with slow-motion turn-based automatic weapon combat. The dynamic campaign system interweaves scripted main missions with random supply or rescue side missions. The watercolour artistic direction recalls Soviet propaganda illustrations, but without caricatural heroism: the war here is deadly and terrible. The soundtrack by composer Marko Yevtushenko blends harmonica and balalaika. The title, expanded by the Back into Operation DLC and more recently an Extended Edition, rekindled Western interest in Soviet resistance. It is now considered one of the best tactical RTS games of the decade.