So I started to experiment with pulling my pilot out of his seat to fight the fires while the gunner continued to shoot. I knew if I didn’t put out the fires the plane would be in even more trouble, but if I took the gunner off then I’d be vulnerable to even more strafing runs. One of the first issues I ran into was deciding if I should take a gunner off of his turret to fight fires or to allow him to continue to shoot down enemy fighters. Though that makes it sound overly simplistic, the game’s complexity arises when several of these disasters strike at once and you must solve them using your limited crew. You have so many disasters happening that you have to solve using a limited amount of tools. Gameplay in Bomber Crew can be simplified to the old analogy of spinning plates. If you send an engineer to go out on a wing to fix an engine but then see a German fighter coming to light you up you may have to spin throwing that soldier off your plane but saving the lives of everyone else on board. You have your overarching mission, but to complete it you are tasked with juggling so many other things aboard the plane that could go wrong. This is a wonderful sim game that has you managing a Royal Air Force bomber doing runs against Nazi Germany anyone who has played FTL will be familiar with the concept. It often feels like grog games have a hostile approach to the player with their vague feedback and often high prices.īomber Crew is affected by none of that. Rarely, though, are these games designed to communicate with the player what they’re doing. These games are often so complex they model the individual bullets in a soldier’s magazine and require you to plan your logistics routes.

Grog games are often hard to get into for new players due to their mysterious UIs and vague mechanics, but for those who can put up with games poorly communicating their information they offer experiences that are very hard to match in other genres. Hex counters with NATO symbols, archaic UIs, and obtuse mechanics plague the sub genre of games I refer to as “grognard games”. I have always been drawn to games that offer a way too in-depth presentation of war.

Bomber crew custom art