Today I want to go over what drove me to make Atlantic ’41. I write it for anyone interested but also for myself. It’s too easy to lose sight of the original vision when you get knee deep into development.

People First

First about the theme. I’m too young to have experienced any of the hardships of World War 2. My dad fought in his late teens, but he wouldn’t talk about it. Yet the subject has always fascinated me. The impact of the conflict still affects many of us, to a certain extent. 
I think it’s about how an event of such magnitude shaped the lives of so many people at the same time. What’s more important, it revealed both the best and the worst in mankind. It stripped us naked.

This human component is relevant to the game. I’m not making a war game at the scale of armies. A u-boat was manned by less than 50 men. In any simulation, the closer you get, the more individuals count, particularly in war games. Reading “Iron Coffin” by Herbert A. Werner made me realize how fear is contagious and the difference a hot meal can make.

Werner Kruger, who served as radio operator aboard U-960, said in an interview: “You had to be compatible.” It may be the most important. No matter what happens, no matter how tough it gets, no one fights; no one complains. It’s a slippery slope, and the captain, along with the officers, have to maintain control and balance at all times. There’s accounts of how ace captains would crack a joke right in the midst of a depth charge run. There’s stories of officers making sure all crew members laced their shoes properly before scuttling a boat. Not just for a dignified exit (or demise), but because, they say, at war, it’s going about the mundane that saves you. It keeps your mind busy, away from bad thoughts. While you're lacing your shoes, you pay less attention to how long the line is before it’s your turn to get out and live. I love these stories. 

All this is prime game design material, but to me it’s the difference between war game and war porn. I won’t lie: I love the diesel engines and the torpedoes and stuff. But without the men, I only get half a simulation.

Story, not Plot

So okay, we need to keep in mind that crew morale, officer’s skills, petty personal drama, should all be a central part of the game. But how to convey this? Now is a good time to talk about story and dialogue.

Stephen King often states his dislike of plot. In fact, most people confuse plot and story. In his book “On Writing”, he explains how situations and dialogue make the story, and I agree with him. However, and this is important: I hate chatty games. I really do. It would be great if Atlantic ‘41 could convey a sense of story, or journey, but it shouldn’t be pre scripted, let alone told through walls of text. I think the game design should be competent enough to generate its own story. 

In other words, the best games are not the ones telling a story, but the ones that the player tell stories about. So I’ll tell you one about my favorite board game ever: “Ambush!” It’s a solitaire game in which you take control of a small WW2 US squad for various missions in France and Belgium.

I remember having this lieutenant; he had the best stats, the best weapons. He was also the youngest. I couldn’t wait to see him annihilate scores of evil nazis. Then he stepped on the battleground, and could not hit anything. Picture a person doing everything wrong. Now I had this other dude; in his late forties, average skills, nothing to write about. He went through hell and back, sent to his doom by said lieutenant to kill a bunch of Germans in a bunker, came back with two prisoners in tow, including an officer. Then he got wounded a second time during a Panzer assault, which he disabled on his own no less. But he was in bad shape and I thought his number was up. Yet somehow he survived. 

As the mission was unfolding, I started to picture these characters; one one hand a young officer straight out of the academy, whose true character, or lack there of, revealed itself on his first combat mission. On the other hand a tired corporal of humble background that experience had shaped into a reliable soldier, whose sole purpose was to see through the war with as many of his men as possible. Then one isolated enemy spotted the group. Problem was, my lieutenant was the only guy with line of sight. Of course he missed. Twice. The German, legitimately upset, shot and killed my poor wounded war daddy right there on his stretcher, on the very last turn of the mission.

At the core, it was just a bunch of stats and dice rolls. The game drew a canvas for my imagination to complete. I still remember it. I think that’s how games tell stories. Not to say dialogue can’t work, but not as exposition. A few lines here and there at the right moment, sure, but gameplay and context should do the heavy lifting.

The Problem of Time

That brings me to the question of time and pacing. I don’t like long games. I must not be the only one, judging by the recent trend of rogue likes (or rogue lites). I think it’s a great system; you’re not intimidated by the enormity of the campaign. I won’t commit for 100 hours in any game, unless you give it to me in 50 chunks of 2 hours. That’s the genius of rogue likes; they get you for the long haul without you even knowing it. This is something I want for Atlantic ’41. 

There’s one problem with this. “Das Boot”, written by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, and even the great mini series by Wolfgang Petersen (especially the series, rather than the film version), illustrate the best how slow the life aboard a u-boat was, most of the time. 4 hours of uneventful watch, 4 hours of nauseating half sleep, punctuated by diesel reeking meals. For weeks. And then a few hours of red lit terror. 

It’s a weird pace for a game, and yet it’s an essential aspect of U-boat warfare. Still, no one wants to play a game in which nothing happens most of the time, only to risk it all on a dice roll. But this could be turned to my advantage, for building tension, or to offer chunks of more relaxed gameplay between bouts of action. I must find a way to translate the slow daily routine, because for the most part, nothing ever happened. 

Timothy Mulligan gives an account of how sparse the action was for submariners in his book “Neither Sharks Nor Wolves”:
“The history of the VIIC in microcosm can be seen in the fates of twenty-five VIIC and VIIC/41 boats…one of their number sank an American destroyer and a British steamer and a second sank an American merchantman. The rest sank nothing, and only five even had the opportunity to fire torpedoes at targets.”

This means that the game should be fun even without a single enemy encounter. Maybe it’s maintaining the boat and the crew, decrypting messages, navigation…To be honest I don’t have the solution to this, but I know that skipping the slow bits to jump to encounters would be a poor reflection of reality. I don’t mean to always stick to historical accuracy, but simulations should make every effort to be faithful to the source material, as long as it doesn’t negatively impact gameplay. 

There’s also a dichotomy between a rogue lite run that you can wrap in a mere hour and a navy career lasting for years.
I have an idea to mitigate this: a run would simulate a patrol, essentially a few weeks at sea. Still not a perfect match, but better. Each successful run advances your career as a captain, and the war progresses.

The types of U-boats I plan to have in the game

This has many advantages. First, it’s a better fit between the duration of a run and the time it represents in game.Second, it works well with an essential concept of the u-boat campaign; as Mulligan explains in his book, the experience for u-boat crews evolved as the war progressed. The u-boats had the upper hand during the early years of the conflict, all throughout 1941, as the allies were trying to grasp with this new menace. Then, they began to organize convoys, which in turn got better protection from destroyers. 

Then new technologies emerged. Radars and better detection systems made the u-boats more vulnerable. With the allies taking control of the air, unavoidable periods surfaced (to recharge batteries) became more and more perilous. Another factor that played against the germans was the constant delayed deployment of more modern u-boats, like the type XXI. Suffice to say, u-boats got it harder and harder as war progressed, up to a point where your chances of surviving the war as a submariner declined to a terrifying 25%. This all  fits very well the idea of successive runs (patrols) in the game becoming increasingly difficult.

Peeling the Onion

Another interesting by-product of a career divided into shorts runs: as the war progresses, new boats and missions become available, as the conflict shifts toward the Indian Ocean and south east Asia. This could work for personnel too. Each run may see a new transfer. You could get a better chief engineer or radio operator. You could be given the command of a mine layer. 
Plus, every survived patrol is a success. The ultimate goal of living through the war may be very hard to achieve, but every successful patrol is a game won. 

Like peeling the onion, the player discovers new facts about the war, unlocks characters and boats. The system was well implemented on “Hades” by Supergiant. 

So to sum up: the game has the structure of a rogue lite, each run representing a patrol lasting a couple of months, with a main objective. Crew and boat are persistent, increasing your efficiency, but allied opposition also increases. Morale, individual skills, especially officer’s, all play an important part. Random events test the crew, shaping a story for the player to remember. Action is shown, never told, and dialogue is limited to a minimum.

That’s for the high level. please leave a comment if you have suggestions, or ideas that could help me make a better game. More next time.