Red Echoes: Berlin is a narrative-driven turn-based strategy game in which you join the German “November Revolution” across 1918 and 1919, during the final days of World War 1. Over the course of three chapters, you’ll play as three budding agitators from different walks of life, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. You’ll move your subversives around a beautiful Berlin map inspired by “classic Weimar-era graphic design”, deploying their special abilities against the minions of the state.
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Several endings await, “from full on defeat to a successful revolution”. The developers, Morningrise Games, are a new studio who say they were founded by somebody who “has previously worked on titles such as Suzerain and its DLC”. That’s Suzerain as in the best game you missed in 2020. It certainly looks similar. Morningrise’s founder has yet to publicly identify themselves, however, which spooks me a bit.
Update: Morningrise’s founder has got in touch to identify himself as Stijn Verstraete, “Torpor’s 3D Artist (and also did some writing) from 2021-2025”. Quite why I was unable to determine this earlier eludes me. Anyway, consider me unspooked.
Original article continues: “As the world reels from the destruction and pain caused by the Great War, the voices of those calling for change grow louder and louder,” the Steam page explains. “In Berlin, almost everyone has lost someone, and shortages of goods are widespread. While the Kaiser’s armies are away fighting his enemies abroad, revolutionaries on the home front, inspired by the events in Russia a year earlier, sense an opportunity.”
I think I studied the November Revolution at school, but that particular wodge of GSCE exam revision has long since burst into dust, along with everything I ever knew about Bismarck (the statesman, not the biscuit). I’m quite eager to rediscover it all. Red Echoes: Berlin will last you around 3-4 hours, and is pencilled in for launch later this year. While we’re talking Suzerain, here’s Julian’s interview with Torpor Games about future games in that setting.