Bit-zkrieg New · free
Shanghai to Berlin, 1937 to 1945. A turn-based tactics game of the Second World War: 66 historical battles, the real generals, the real tanks, ships and aircraft, and a soundtrack of period recordings.
Every shot is real gameplay, recorded in the game itself. Music: Holst, “Mars, the Bringer of War”, played by the United States Air Force Band (public domain).
On a phone or tablet? Touch works, but the maps are big: turn your phone sideways and tap Open on its own, or play on a laptop for the best view.
Your campaigns, veterans, medals, maps and settings are saved only in your own browser. Start with Basic Training if you have never played an Advance Wars-style game.
Eleven campaigns of the war, plus Basic Training to learn the drill. Every battle opens with a briefing built on what really happened: the forces on each side, the stakes and the ground. When it is over, an aftermath tells you what happened next, in the war and to the generals.
Turn-based battles in the spirit of Advance Wars, built around the war as it was fought: 18 armies, 81 generals and admirals with their own powers, and 274 kinds of unit, from Polish lancers and Matilda tanks to Tigers, Shermans, Zeros, U-boats and battleships. Every unit has its real name and armament, and the Archive tells its story.
Weather, night, fog of war, minefields, beach obstacles and bridges you can blow or build. Veterans who survive carry on into the next battle, and a battle scene plays out every attack.
The soundtrack is 60 real recordings, many from the period itself: Elgar, Holst and Sousa, Chopin played by Josef Hofmann in 1923, the Red Army Ensemble, the Imperial Japanese Navy Band, and a 1935 Shanghai recording of the March of the Volunteers.
Before release, every battle was played again and again by eight AI testers with different temperaments: a methodical player, an aggressive one, a cautious one, an opportunist, a reckless one, a rusher, a turtle and a sniper. Over 500 games at a time. The difficulty shown on each briefing comes from those results, and the tests found bugs a person might not have hit for weeks.
| Mouse / touch | Click a unit, click a blue tile to move it, then pick an order. Red tiles are targets. Right-click goes back. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom. |
| Keyboard | Arrows move the cursor, Enter or Z confirms, Esc or X goes back, Tab jumps to the next unit, E ends the turn, H asks your adviser, and T (or the Danger button) shades every tile the enemy can hit next turn. |
| Controller | Supported. |
| Help | The Field Manual and the Archive in the game explain every rule, unit and general. |
Bit-zkrieg: Iron Front '44 is a game about real events, made by Tristan Hotham with AI assistance (Claude). Its battles, armies, units and commanders are historical; briefings follow the historical record, but generals' dialogue is dramatised, and game balance changes some numbers. It depicts war, including period national flags (German flags can be set to Balkenkreuz only) and stylised violence (gore can be turned off in Settings). Dead of Night is a fictional mode. Music is public domain or openly licensed and credited in the in-game Jukebox. No data is collected; your progress is saved only in your own browser.