Black Six has successfully created and release two independent campaigns for the IL-2 series with Ten Days of Autumn focused on a Bf109 pilot flying near Moscow while Blazing Steppe covered a Yak-1 pilot in the late summer of the Stalingrad battle. Following an equally interesting Sea Dragons campaign that shipped with IL-2: Battle of Kuban, we now have a new campaign coming soon and its title? Fortress over the Volga.

The fortress

Announced today, Fortress over the Volga sees the player take on the role of deputy Staffel commander in I./JG 52 assigned to the front lines near the fighting over Stalingrad. Your primary aircraft will be the Bf109G-2.

Naturally, the setting of this campaign makes it meant for owners of IL-2: Battle of Stalingrad.

Unlike earlier campaigns, this one is expected to present a greater challenge for players and offer a greater array of random events offering better replayability and making sure that if you do have to repeat a mission – it may not end up playing the same way as the first one.

The feature list also suggests that there will be more events going on in missions and that aircraft will continue to spawn and fly their own objectives well after you’re own flight should be done – if you’re not, it will ensure that the skies won’t just be empty because you really should have returned to base by now. It’s a nice touch.

Here are some of the key features:

• All missions are based on historical events and contain a number of additions and innovations compared to the previous Scripted Campaigns:While “Ten Days of Autumn” was a semi-educational campaign that introduced you to the new game mode, “Fortress on the Volga” (like “Blazing Steppe”) offers a normal difficulty level. It will be challenging!
• The mission structure has been changed. Now there is a possibility that additional aircraft groups will appear in the vicinity. This can either simplify or substantially complicate your task, ultimately increasing the replayability of the whole campaign.
• Whenever possible, air and ground battles will continue for another 15-20 minutes after the mission’s objective has been completed.
• A large number of new maps and operation records available from the Ministry of Defense archives allowed us to recreate the movement of the front-lines not only near Stalingrad, but also at the defense lines occupied by the Soviet 57th and 51st armies to the South of the city and along the Don to the Northwest in detail

Pre-order discount available now

The campaign is set to release later this month, however, if you’re interested in purchasing now 1CGS is offering a small discount knocking the price down from the standard $9.99 to $7.99.

If you’re interested, you can pre-order now.

Q&A coming soon

I have some exciting Stormbird related news to share here as well. I’ve been working with Black Six to bring you the latest Community Q&A talking about the new campaign, his earlier campaigns, and how Black Six got into creating this type of content. I’m readying this Q&A for you folks now and it will be releasing as soon as I’m able to along with some exclusive screenshots from the upcoming campaign. Stay tuned for that!