2007 · Educational · Real-time strategy

Talvisota: Icy Hell

RTS based on the Winter War conflict between Finland and the Soviet Union.

Released: 16 November 2007
Platforms: Windows
Genres: Educational Real-time strategy Real-time tactics Strategy World War II
Developers: —
Publishers: Nival
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Historical Non-fiction Educational Warfare
Engine: Enigma Engine
Country: Russia

About

Talvisota: Icy Hell (Russian "Talvisota: Ледяной ад") is a real-time tactics and educational computer game, developed by the international developer group Blitzfront Game Studio and is based on the events of the Winter War (Finnish: talvisota) conflict of 1939–1940 between Finland and the Soviet Union. The game is built-up upon Nival Interactive's Enigma Engine that was used in the Blitzkrieg game and is a fully stand-alone product.

The Finnish Board of Film Classification determined that Talvisota: Icy Hell is both a real-time strategy and an educational game.

Keywords

world war ii - ww2
soviet russia
season winter
finland

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

The game's development was started by the Russian language online community, which consisted of people from different countries that were interested in military history and historical games. In 2004 they started wondering why nobody had made a game about the Winter War, a highly interesting war conflict, although somewhat unknown to the public. They decided to make the game themselves.

Because of various publishing problems, the game wasn't released for a long time despite development being completely finished. At the end of 2007 the game was finally released in CIS countries in Russian. A year later, at the end of 2008, the game was released in Finland in English.

Reception

The game received generally positive reviews from game critics. Finland's main website for historians reviewed the game from historical and cultural perspectives, and their opinion was generally positive.

There were some negative opinions as well. For example, Finnish Captain Olli Ovaska said that the game claimed that the Finnish military attacked the USSR on the first day of the war, but according to the game developers, Olli Ovaska misunderstood something as they never claimed such a thing.