Tannenberg

Tannenberg is a squad-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game set during World War I. It is a standalone expansion to Verdun, and was released on 17 November 2017 on Steam Early Access.

Tannenberg is inspired by the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg in East Prussia. The game includes historically accurate World War I weapons, authentic uniforms and equipment, detailed injury and gore modeling, and maps based on the real battlefields of the Eastern Front.

The game runs on the Unity engine and was created by independent studios M2H and Blackmill Games.

Gameplay

Tannenberg is a squad based game set on the Eastern Front of World War I that can be played with up to 64 players. There are 3 game modes in Tannenberg: Maneuver, Attrition Warfare and Rifle Deathmatch.

Maneuver game mode In the Maneuver game mode, players join either the Entente or the Central Powers. After choosing a squad type and role within the squad, players join the battle where they have to capture sectors. Holding sectors provides control points (more or less depending on the value of the sector) and the team with the most control points will drain the other side's resources. The game ends when one team runs out of resources, when either team's HQ sector is captured, or when the match time runs out. Some sectors grant special abilities like recon planes and artillery strikes. Supply lines are represented by requiring sectors to be connected to a team's HQ sector before that team can capture it.

Attrition Warfare game mode This is a variant of a team deathmatch battle. Each team, the Entente and the Central Powers, start with a number of tickets. These represent the amount of manpower that each side has at its disposal. Every time a player is killed and respawns, a ticket is deducted from the side he belongs to. The goal of the game is to diminish the opposing side’s tickets before losing all the tickets on your side, because a player cannot respawn if there are no more tickets.

Rifle Deathmatch game mode In Rifle Deathmatch, players fight in a free for all battle, armed only with one of the rifles and add-ons they can choose from when joining the game. This is a skill-based game-mode, where marksmanship and tactical cunning are rewarded. Players can earn experience and Career Points by killing other players, and with the Career Points can level up their rifles, gaining extra accessories for it, such as a bayonet.

Reception

On November 30 two weeks after release Tannenberg had 92% positive user reviews on Steam.

A Rock Paper Shotgun Early Access review of the game commended it for portraying war with some nuance: "While war shooters typically deal in bombast and screaming and artillery barrages, Tannenberg juxtaposes that with quiet, everyday tragedies." The reviewer described Tannenberg as an improvement compared to Verdun, but also less unique. "It’s already a better game, certainly a more exciting one, but it’s not got as unique an appeal."