Info about All Quiet in the Trenches:

Official game description:
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?  
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.  
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.  
On our homepage you can find our Early Access Roadmap and FAQ for the game.

Release date: 17 Jan, 2024

Categories: Squad Management, Turn-based Combat, Resource Management, Choice-based Narrative, Base Building, Moral Decision-Making, Environmental Storytelling, Management Simulation


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Strong Early Access Foundation (weight 1): Despite being in early access, the game is highly regarded for its polished state and compelling concept, often feeling more complete than typical early access titles. Reviewers express significant optimism for its future development and full release.
- Highly Praised & Unique (weight 0.85): The game receives overwhelmingly positive feedback, frequently described as fun, unique, and innovative. Many players find it captivating and enjoyable, even in its early stages, highlighting its strong overall appeal.
- Authentic WWI Experience (weight 0.33): The game is highly praised for its realistic and historically accurate depiction of World War I, focusing on the human dimension and grim realities of trench warfare. It effectively conveys the struggles and emotional impact of soldiers' daily lives.
- Compelling Story & Characters (weight 0.27): The game features masterful storytelling, well-developed characters with unique personalities and backstories, and engaging dialogue. The narrative is often delivered through immersive formats like first-person journals, allowing players to form genuine connections with their soldiers and experience their evolving stories.
- Innovative Tactical Combat (weight 0.15): The combat system is highlighted as unique, exciting, and refreshing, blending tactical depth with a sense of danger and chaos. Players enjoy the new style and the risk-reward choices it presents, making battles feel impactful and realistic.
- Challenging Strategic Choices (weight 0.11): The game demands strategic thinking and careful risk assessment, forcing players to make difficult ethical and tactical decisions in tight situations. This challenging gameplay, combined with dynamic events and varied scenarios, contributes significantly to its high replayability.
- Realistic Squad Management (weight 0.1): The game provides a highly realistic and engaging squad management experience, including daily soldier life details and the struggle to keep squad members alive. Players feel a genuine concern for their unit's survival and well-being.
- Consistent Developer Updates (weight 0.08): The developers are praised for consistently releasing updates, adding new content, and promptly addressing issues. This active support keeps players engaged and builds confidence in the game's ongoing improvement.
- Engaging Trench Mechanics (weight 0.06): The game's implementation of trench defense, offense, and rotation is well-received, adding a realistic and enjoyable layer of management. Neglecting trench upkeep has tangible consequences, enhancing the strategic depth.
- Player Freedom & Choice (weight 0.06): The game offers players various ways to approach challenges, allowing for different playstyles and strategic decisions, such as focusing on prestige or soldier well-being. This flexibility enhances replayability and player engagement.
- Visually Appealing Art (weight 0.06): Reviewers consistently praise the game's art style, describing it as cool, nice to look at, and having great direction. The visual aesthetics contribute positively to the overall experience.

Common complaints:
- Clunky & Unclear Combat (weight 0.45): Players consistently report that the combat system is janky, lacks clarity, and feels unsatisfying. Specific issues include poor AI, lack of tactical control, unclear outcomes, and frustrating soldier behavior, making battles feel meaningless and often unplayable.
- Limited Content & Value (weight 0.43): Reviewers frequently criticize the game's short length, repetitive gameplay, and lack of substantial content, especially for its price point. Many feel it offers only a few hours of unique gameplay, making it feel like a demo rather than a full game. The save system also contributes to frustration by causing lost progress.
- Unfair Difficulty & Balance (weight 0.27): Many players find the game's difficulty unbalanced and unfair, with mechanics like the fatigue system and 'dice-roll' outcomes leading to constant punishment and frustration. The game often feels like it's working against the player, lacking clear feedback and options to mitigate challenges, making it not fun.
- Lack of Realism & Immersion (weight 0.11): Players note a lack of historical realism and immersion, particularly regarding the portrayal of officers and soldiers. Specific complaints include an overly villainous commander, repetitive and annoying soldier dialogue, and a failure to translate soldier traits into meaningful gameplay effects.
- Performance & Bugs (weight 0.11): The game suffers from various technical issues, including performance problems like lag during combat and long enemy turn processing times. Players also report general bugs, glitches, and janky graphics that detract from the overall experience.

Gameplay feedback:
- Core Squad Management (weight 0.26): The game primarily focuses on managing a squad of German soldiers in WWI, including their daily lives, happiness, stress, and combat roles, from the perspective of a commanding officer.
- Tactical Trench Combat (weight 0.18): Combat is tactical and set in WWI trenches, featuring elements like suppressive fire, close combat, grenades, and the ability to build defenses. Actions can be influenced by dice rolls.
- Moral Decision-Making (weight 0.15): Players face difficult moral and strategic decisions, such as risking lives to save wounded soldiers or balancing superior officer demands with troop needs, sometimes leading to inability to help comrades.
- Branching Story Choices (weight 0.11): The game features a choose-your-own-adventure style narrative with many branching paths and choices that influence gameplay, blending visual novel elements with turn-based strategy.
- Authentic WWI Trench Setting (weight 0.11): The game authentically portrays the WWI trench warfare experience, including the harsh conditions, morale challenges, and the repetitive nature of fighting over the same ground, reminiscent of "All Quiet on the Western Front."
- Unimpactful Battle Outcomes (weight 0.09): Battles often feel predetermined or have little impact on the overall outcome, with unclear instructions and unexpected ends, leading to a sense of futility.
- Unexplained Soldier Disappearance (weight 0.08): A recurring issue is soldiers going missing or disappearing without clear explanation after being wounded or left behind, often resulting in their unexplained death in camp.
- Challenging Resource Management (weight 0.08): The game is a difficult resource management simulator that involves significant micro-managing and reading, requiring players to carefully balance various resources and soldier needs.
- Detailed Soldier States (weight 0.06): Soldiers exhibit specific vulnerabilities and states in combat, such as surviving headshots, bleeding out, returning to cover, and being targeted by snipers, adding realism to their condition.
- Camp Management Activities (weight 0.05): The camp phase involves balancing troop recovery, morale, and renown with various required and optional tasks like chores, medical tent duty, and digging latrines.
- Unique Soldier Attributes (weight 0.05): Each soldier possesses unique attributes, skills, strengths, weaknesses, and even political opinions, influencing their performance and interactions.
- Trench Maintenance Tasks (weight 0.05): Gameplay includes specific trench maintenance activities such as digging communication trenches, stringing barbed wire, and repairing caved-in sections, alternating between frontline and backline.
- Short Campaign Length (weight 0.05): The main story campaign is relatively short, with playthroughs typically ranging from 3 to 5 hours.
- Simple Yet Deep Gameplay (weight 0.05): The game's core principle is simple and linear, making it easy to learn, but its strategic depth and mastery require significant effort.
- Unique Turn-Based Combat (weight 0.04): The game features a unique turn-based combat system where actions happen simultaneously and progress logically, considering factors like movement under fire.
- No Grind, Save System Issues (weight 0.04): The game offers no grinding opportunities, but its save mechanism is automatic and lacks manual save options or clear explanations.
- Multi-Genre Blend (weight 0.04): The game blends multiple genres, including strategy RPG, action, drama, turn-based strategy, base management, and elements of relationships and resource management.
- Scripted Missions & Fatigue (weight 0.04): The game features scripted missions, an autosave system that triggers daily and before missions, and a fatigue system for soldiers.
- Daily Trench Progression (weight 0.04): Each turn in the trench stage represents a day, with periods where opposing sides do not actively fight, focusing on survival and management during combat days.
- Combat Retreats Possible (weight 0.03): Players can experience situations where their squad falls back during battle, indicating a dynamic combat flow where retreat or losing ground is possible.
- Dynamic Combat Events (weight 0.03): Combat includes dynamic events such as squad separation due to grenades or close-quarters engagements, where individual squad members can be shot.

Performance notes:
- Good performance, well optimized (weight 0.08): Many players report the game runs stably with no major crashes or stutters, even on lower-end hardware. This indicates good overall optimization and a smooth technical experience.
- Minor bugs present (weight 0.03): Players have noted the presence of minor bugs within the game. While some of these issues have already been addressed, ongoing refinement is needed for small technical glitches.
- Small game file size (weight 0.03): The game boasts a very small and manageable file size, which is a positive for players with limited storage space. One review humorously noted its tiny footprint.

Recommendations:
- Highly Recommended Game (weight 0.53): Many reviewers enthusiastically recommend the game, often giving high ratings (8-10/10). They highlight its appeal to fans of war simulations, resource management, and narrative-driven strategy, expressing excitement for its future development and content.
- Caution: Early Access State (weight 0.38): A significant number of reviewers advise potential buyers to wait for future updates, a sale, or the full release. Concerns include the current short playtime, high price for the current content, and specific issues like unpolished battle AI.
- Eager for Future Content (weight 0.38): Players are highly anticipating the full release and future updates, expressing excitement for new content, story conclusions, and specific features like more unique characters, battle animations, and potential DLCs for other nations/wars.
- Appeals to Niche Audience (weight 0.05): The game is recommended for players who find its unique concept appealing, enjoy similar titles like "This War of Mine" or "Valiant Hearts," or are not deterred by potential language barriers.
- Game Was Refunded (weight 0.02): A small number of players reported refunding the game, sometimes citing reasons like high price relative to current content length, which aligns with broader concerns about the early access state.
- Emotionally Impactful Gameplay (weight 0.01): Reviewers describe the game as having a strong emotional impact, leading to feelings of loss or "depression" when soldiers are lost. This indicates a powerful, albeit potentially frustrating, player experience.

Other player notes:
- Early Access, Promising Future (weight 0.22): The game is currently in Early Access, meaning it is short and not yet complete. However, reviewers are excited about its potential, noting consistent updates and looking forward to the full campaign and finished product.
- More Gameplay Features (weight 0.08): Reviewers suggest expanding the game with a variety of new events, including serious, lighthearted, and character-specific scenarios. They also propose features like rewards for trench upgrades, pre-battle squad positioning, and a system for soldiers to gain or lose traits.
- Engaging Story & Characters (weight 0.07): The game features a compelling narrative with minor story events and impactful decisions, creating strong emotional connections to the characters. Reviewers praise the writing for soldiers and express a desire for the story to be further developed.
- Immersive WW1 Experience (weight 0.07): The game effectively conveys the grim realities and themes of World War 1, drawing players into the setting and fostering emotional connections with soldiers. This immersive experience serves as a poignant reminder of the war's tragic nature.
- Quality of Life & Modes (weight 0.06): Players suggest adding quality-of-life features such as cheats or easier difficulty options to enhance enjoyment. There's also a desire for new game modes, specifically a sandbox or unlimited time mode, and the inclusion of achievements.
- Management Sim Gameplay (weight 0.04): The game primarily functions as a logistics and personnel management simulation, focusing on camp management and resource allocation. It provides a solid framework for a permadeath wartime RPG, with combat often resolved through dice-roll mechanics.
- Accessible Yet Challenging (weight 0.04): The game is noted for being easy to pick up and learn, while still offering depth that makes it challenging to master. Its broad appeal makes it suitable for a wide range of players, despite its unique genre blend.
- Decent Technical Performance (weight 0.04): Reviewers generally find the game's graphics and audio to be acceptable, and note that the PC requirements are reasonable. This indicates a satisfactory technical foundation for the game.
- Enhance Visual Immersion (weight 0.03): Reviewers suggest visual enhancements to deepen the game's immersion, such as making the visuals darker with vignette effects, denser rain, and light fog. They also recommend adding visual effects when troops are under fire to complement the game's aesthetic.

Emotions:
- satisfaction (weight 0.25): Emotion: satisfaction
- frustration (weight 0.1): Emotion: frustration
- disappointment (weight 0.11): Emotion: disappointment
- excitement (weight 0.07): Emotion: excitement
- anticipation (weight 0.05): Emotion: anticipation
- anger (weight 0.01): Emotion: anger
- immersion (weight 0.02): Emotion: immersion
- appreciation (weight 0.05): Emotion: appreciation
- amusement (weight 0.02): Emotion: amusement
- enjoyment (weight 0.03): Emotion: enjoyment
- hope (weight 0.06): Emotion: hope
- engagement (weight 0.02): Emotion: engagement
- joy (weight 0.02): Emotion: joy
- admiration (weight 0.01): Emotion: admiration
- sadness (weight 0.02): Emotion: sadness}