Six Days in Fallujah finally hits Steam Early Access in June
The long awaited tactical combat sim, Six Days in Fallujah, is finally arriving in Steam Early Access on June 22, more than 15 years after development originally began. There are teenagers who literally weren’t born when this game was cancelled back in 2009 by Konami admitst backlash that it glorified the horrors of a very real, and then very recent, war.
Development originally began just months after the Second Battle of Fallujah, a conflict in the Middle East that started in November 2004 between US and American forces and Al Qaeda. Despite the game being the brainchild of a wounded marine and the involvement of over 100 US marines and even several dozen Iraqi soldiers, the negative buzz around the game led to its cancellation.
In 2017, publisher Victura restarted development with Highwire Games, to finally bring the game to life. In the words of Sgt. Eddie Garcia, the marine who conceived of the idea: “The way we play video games right now is not how people fight in real life. Six Days in Fallujah requires tactics and teamwork that are more like real combat than any other game I’ve played.”
To facilitate this lean towards a more realistic, cerebral experience, Six Days in Fallujah will boast:
• Procedural Architecture re-shapes the inside and outside of every building each time the game is played. Just like the real battle, players never know what to expect.
• Block-scale AI is a dramatic new approach to AI based on insurgent tactics from the battle. Unlike games in which AI is constrained to move in very small areas, AI enemies can go anywhere on the battlefield, and they will stalk, flank, and ambush players while coordinating their attacks with each other and luring players into difficult situations.
• Global Dynamic Lighting simulates real weather and lighting effects dynamically, so visibility shapes gameplay, especially as players move between blindingly bright outdoors and terrifyingly dark indoors. Realistic smoke, dust, and weather effects complicate visibility in unpredictable ways.
• Tactical Indoor/Outdoor Sandbox. Players, and their AI enemies, are free to approach challenges from any direction. Rather than breaching a house through a front door, for example, players might choose to climb to a rooftop, or cross rooftops on wooden planks, to attack from the top down.
Early access will begin with limited content focusing on the early days of the battle. But Highwire promise more features to come during the period, including cooperative play and the option to choose either US marines or Iraqi soldiers. Victura also plan to additional co-op missions as well as campaign missions that focus on stories told by real veterans of the conflict.
Six Days in Fallujah will launch on Steam Early Access on June 22, 2023 for the price of $39.99. The full release on PC and console is set for some time in 2024, but no concrete date has been given.
