A satirical adventure-strategy game about the overwhelming stupidity that surrounded the Spanish Civil War and the lives of the common folk that went through it
The Game
Play as Roberto - a career military man, father and husband - as he navigates the ridiculous sequence of events that took place in Spain between 1921 and 1939 while he just tries to live his fucking life. Roberto will find himself right at the center of escalating conflicts, unceasingly bombarded with requests to “pick a dog”, as he struggles to keep work and politics separate from friends and family.
Enter a satirical take on the darkest moment in Spanish history as you lead the republican army through multiple idiocy-and-irrationality-fueled insurrections, revolutions and coups. Direct your troops, help your daughter with her homework, accomplish military objectives, go on a date with your wife, interact with historical figures, send thousands of people to their deaths and try not to get fired.
This is a story about politics, people, empathy and sheer stupidity.
Features
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…against people that don’t want to fight led by people they don’t want leading them. This is not your regular old strategy game:
Every “soldier” you command is a real person and not all of them are professionally trained. They each have their own life, aspirations, dreams and goals.
Your “army” shouldn’t even be called an “army”: it consists of local militias, conscripts, political activists, international volunteers... A lot of different groups with their own agenda.
Just because you sent orders does not mean they will be followed. You’ll be fighting your own soldiers almost as much as you’ll be fighting the enemy.
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Plan your army’s actions at the same time as your opponent and, when you’re ready, see both plans be executed at the same time. Neither you nor the enemy will know what the other one is planning and, since both strategies are executed simultaneously, orders won’t always be followed to the “t”:
Maybe you sent your troops to take a city that is now occupied by the enemy.
Maybe you asked them to cross a bridge that no longer exists.
Or maybe the engineer you asked to build defenses just got assassinated….
You’ll need to analyze your opponent’s past moves, figure out what their next one will be and try to plan around that.
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The setting for this game is deeply personal and tragic for a lot of people.
We’ve spent countless hours reading and researching the civil war, biographies, military tactics and history and we’re trying to get experts involved. Our goal is to get as much information, nuance and insight as possible so we can do the setting the justice it deserves. We intend to provide bibliography and sources (both in this website and the game itself) that will include further reading and details.
One final note for clarity: we consider the victims of this conflict to be the citizens, the conscripts and anyone that was caught in the cross-hairs of a war they didn’t care for or want. We consider that our duty is to them (and only them).
Politicians, activists, militias, terrorists, dictators, bullies, kings and tyrants are all fair game.
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During the 9 years between 1930 to 1939, Spain went through quite a few significant social and political changes and events:
A war offshore and a Monarchy.
One dictatorship, one dictatorship “lite” and the start of a third one.
The constitution of a republic.
Two left-wing governments and one right-wing one.
Divorce and women suffrage were both encoded to law.
A constant rise of political and religious violence.
Three insurrections, three military coups and two revolutions.
16 prime minister changes and 6 presidential changes.
A civil war.
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The history of the Spanish Civil War seems to have become some sort of legend. It has been glorified and contorted to fit the political and ideological agenda of a lot of different people and the true story behind it has been partially lost.
No matter their political leaning, people tend to think of it as the glorious fight of “the righteous” against “the wicked”. A war between idealists that believed in a cause so strongly they were willing to die for it. We are not interested in that fairytale.
The fact of the matter is that “volunteers” were a very small fraction of either army. Most of the soldiers were young (and not-so-young) conscripts that were forced to fight in a given side just because of were they were living when the war started. There are numerous cases of soldiers “flip-flopping” from one side to the other (and even back again as the war progressed), reports of people hiding so they’re not conscripted and stories of soldiers trying to run away from it all. These events happened in both sides and they’re not the behavior of people that are fighting for an ideal.
We want to tell the story of those conscripts and of the common people during these troubled times. They had friends, relationships, dinners, parties, funerals… How did it all relate to and interact with the events that were unfolding?
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AIW is alive and full of people with their own relationships, passions, dreams and aspirations. Even the individual soldiers in each army are more than a number and a “health bar”. There are no extras here.
Interact with the world, make your impact on the country, see characters evolve and grow, watch as the city changes through the season and years… The adventure-style gameplay let’s you dive deep into the world of the game by following Roberto’s story: a personal “dramedy” that spans years and is affected by (or directly affects) history.