The War to End all Wars is a colony sim now, with an Acceptable Losses gauge

Pattering out a hasty news piece

If Dig In were called a 'historical wave defence strategy base-builder' or similar I wouldn't have been jarred by it. Odds are I'd have skimmed right past. Instead, Icelandic developers Vitar Games are calling it "a WW1 trench warfare colony sim", and this wigs me out a little. We are colonising the Somme! Nothing is too sacred for artistic depiction, and people have been commodifying memories of the World Wars for decades, but throwing in an ultra-compacted gravitational mass of a concept like "colony" really turns it all up to 11/11.

It's a gift to cultural essayists. Within the combinatory logics of Steam, it's also a harbinger for such genres as the "WW1 life sim" or even "cosy WW1". I am trying to imagine what Wilfred Owen might have written about bladder gauges. Here is a trailer.

From the Steam page, Dig In is a "blend of trench warfare, colony sim management, and real-time tactics is built around deep systemic interactions". You draw out trench networks from on high, equipping them with dugouts and barbed wire and reinforced walls. You attend to the bodily needs and morale of your men – each a named individual with a disconcertingly Fireman Sam-esque portrait and a pre-war background that ranges from life in the gutter to a cosseted aristocratic upbringing.

Then come the battles: you'll need to stave off assaults while preparing your own, as you invade and secure quadrants on a paper map. You can order artillery barrages (which "don't discriminate") and send your troops over the top, preferably after having expanded your network to ensure that they have the minimum amount of exposed ground to run over. "Runners are the lifeline of your command," the Steam page notes. "Every order takes time to deliver, and miscommunication can spell disaster. Need to cancel that attack? Hope the runner makes it in time."

It's out in early access at some point. If you're on board, you might also enjoy War Hospital and/or Brendy's adventures in WW1 MMO Foxhole.