All Quiet in the Trenches

All Quiet in the Trenches is a narrative turn-based strategy RPG for PC set in World War I.

All Quiet in the Trenches in Steam Early Access

To Steam

1915, World War I, Western Front. As a german Unteroffizier, you are responsible for a group of soldiers. Whether they will survive the war is in your hands. Welcome to the trenches, Herr Unteroffizier!

The time in the camp is marked by heavy labor with an insecure supply situation. Is there enough time for the men to rest? Can they process the horrors they have experienced and mourn the fallen?

The chaos of war threatens the physical and mental well-being of the soldiers. Again and again you have to make decisions in an attempt to face the fatal coincidences of the battlefield.

Your decisions between the needs of the soldiers and the demands of the superiors result in a unique story each time. But your choices don't change the war. They change the life of your soldiers.

Gefoerdert durch: Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur aufgrund eines Beschlusses des Deutschen Bundestages

Roadmap

0.5 Early Access Release

17 January 2024
- First year of the game, from Spring 1915 to Spring 1916
- Focus on the core content of the game
- All the different phases of the game (trench, battle and camp)
- A pool of 12 soldiers
- Around 70 projects
- 80 different stories that can be triggered in the journal
- A story-driven intro scenario and 15 randomly selected levels afterwards
- A variety of dynamic events and dialogues that can occur throughout the game
0.6 Trench Update

Early April 2024
- Building/repairing selected defences, barbed wire, ladders, bridges
- Longer Trench phases with new tasks, projects and additional features
- New trench areas and new defensive and offensive battles
- New stories inside and outside the Trench
- Expansion of the map
- General revision and improvement of existing content
0.7 Battle Update

For this, we plan to add machine guns, enhance the battle map, include new offensive and defensive levels and polish the battle phase in general. Several extreme play styles are planned to be considered, such as very cautious or very aggressive, very soldier-friendly or very prestige-oriented.
0.8 Gas Update

In this update, we plan to extend the game to cover the period up to Spring 1917. Stories of historical events will be added, and the Gas War will be addressed and incorporated into the trench and battle phases.
0.9 Soldiers Update

We're planning to introduce a soldier skill system with new traits and unique skills that they can learn as they go through the war. We also plan to add more character attributes, two more soldiers and additional projects. Circumstances such as the death of soldiers will be dealt with in more detail.
0.10 Hospital Update

War-related illnesses, as well as injuries and mental suffering, are planned to be taken into account in this update.
0.11 French Update

This update will focus on the French soldiers and add more interactions with the French village.
1.0 End of War Update (Full Release)

For this update we plan to add the last phase of the war up to 11 November 1918. It's planned to feature a wide range of content in general, including historical stories from this period.
Further Support & Bugfixing

Frequently Asked Questions

The Early Access release date is the 17 January 2024. For now, we will only be releasing the game for PC (via Steam on Windows/Linux/Steamdeck). Console ports may come at some point, but as they are a lot of work and we are a small team, we can't guarantee anything and it highly depends on the success of the initial release. An exact date for our full release has not yet been set, but if everything goes well, probably 2025/2026.

It means that the game is still in development. What we are releasing is not the finished game. There may still be some rough spots and some parts may still be changed if we discover something doesn't work the way we planned.

At the start of Early Access the game will cover the time period from early 1915 to early 1916. The years after that (up to the end of the war in November 1918) will sequentially be added as updates, along with minor changes where necessary and possibly additional content for the already included time.

This approach allows us to focus on period-specific content while also hopefully giving you a good gaming experience to start with.

The playing time for a single playthrough can vary greatly. In addition to the individual style of play and the decisions made, many random factors have a major influence on the number of events and stories, the difficulty and therefore also on the playing time of a playthrough, above all the random change between the battle, camp and frontline trench phases. One turn in the camp takes 12 days, while it takes over 15 turns for one day in the battle.

The game is designed to be played many times and replayability is also an important factor for us when planning future updates.

In an earlier version of the FAQ, we tried to estimate how long a playthrough would take during development. This was too high. Based on current experience, we estimate a playthrough to take 2-8 hours, depending on chance and player behaviour.

Some parts are linear, some are not. The timeline of the war is fixed. Your actions will not change the course of the war. You won't be able to win the war, you won't even have any real influence on what major events take place during your time at the front. But you will be able to make decisions that will affect your soldiers and their stories. How and whether they will make it to the end of the war depends on you. There are also some events that can be randomly triggered. So those decision-based storylines and random events make every playthrough different and you might have a different experience each time.

So in short: the overall war story is pretty linear and stays the same. But the more personal stories can change.

In order to tell interesting and meaningful stories through our soldiers, they themselves all have set backgrounds and personalities and their own personal story arcs (which are influenced by your decisions). We hope this will help create a diverse and profound cast of characters. Currently there are 12 soldiers in total. Which soldiers you will have in your troop will be randomly selected at the start of each playthrough.

At the moment and for the foreseeable future (definitely throughout Early Access) we will stick to only German and English. We'd love to have the game available in many different languages, but it's not feasible right now. Our game has a lot of dynamic text (i.e. text that changes depending on certain circumstances) and we are still in the process of improving some of it, so there may still be changes. So until the texts are at least semi-final, translating it would mean spending a lot of time (and money) on things that might not make it into the game.

We’re not planning on it, no. As this is an anti-war game with a clear message we fear this might defeat the point. Without oversight, it would be far too easy to misappropriate and thereby warp the message.

At the moment it's not possible to customise your soldiers. We are looking into ways in which we might be able to include some customisable aspects in the game without straying too far from what you as an Unteroffizier would actually have control over in that situation.

A lot of what has happened in the last hundred years has been impacted by WW1. It is a war that is already culturally remembered as being largely senseless, as is very well portrayed in "All Quiet on the Western Front"/"Im Westen nichts Neues" by Erich Maria Remarque, one of our main inspirations for the game. This perspective and the fact that we are German ourselves (making German history and cultural aspects more easily accessible for us) led to the setting of our game.

It’s very unlikely that you will be able to play as different nations in the future. That type of content would require a lot of additional research and work which exceeds our capacities as it would basically mean making a new game. The same goes for DLCs with different wars.

As the game is meant to portray the lives of individual soldiers who most likely wouldn't have been involved in specific historical events you probably won't participate either. However, just as you would have back then, you will hear about the big battles and events, feel their consequences and, in some cases, see your soldiers' reactions to the news.

All Quiet in the Trenches