If you’re a fan of air combat and are looking for something a bit different, you may want to keep your eye on Scramble: Battle of Britain from Slitherine. This in development title focuses on the mechanics of air combat and it may even help with your IL-2 and DCS flying. Let’s have a look!
Air combat, reexamined
Air combat in titles like DCS and IL-2 often happens in just seconds. A lot of moves and counter moves are made and there isn’t often time to stop and think about all of it. At least, not unless you go back and take a moment to examine each moment.
Scramble: Battle of Britain appears to be making a game out of that planing and reexamining experience while wrapping it in something fun. The title focus on three turn based steps per turn. First, there’s a planning phase where you make decisions on what you’re going to do. Second, the action phase where the game shows you what the result of your decisions were. Third, review what happened.
Then, the next turn begins and you start over again.
The developers report that at the end you can go back and watch the whole thing as a complete dogfight. They also report that there are real physics at play with a more flight sim approach to this than you may typically get in a typical turn based or boardgame like experience.
Features
Scramble: Battle of Britain plans to incorporate single player and multiplayer experiences along with a single player campaign. Each dogfight is expected to take about 20 minutes to play through with each turn by turn moment played through amounting to about 5-6 minutes of an actual dogfight engagement at the end.
The title also plans to incorporate several Battle of Britain era aircraft. Here’s the official list:
- Supermarine Spitfire
- Hawker Hurricane
- Boulton Paul Defiant
- Gloster Gladiator
- Bristol Blenheim
- Messerschmitt Bf 109
- Junkers JU87 “Stuka”
- Messerschmitt BF110
- Heinkel He111
- Dornier Do17
- Junkers JU88
The title was revealed at an event in mid-May and is under active development right now. No ETA has been released but I will keep an eye on this title. It looks like it might be a fun experience on its own but also as a potential tool for DCS or IL-2 pilots to learn better tactics by planning each moment.
Among the developers is my friend, Jon Coughlin, who you may know as the developer of Roger Meatball (check out the Q&A that we did). I’ve flown many hours of IL-2 and DCS multiplayer with Jon and if his level of experience is at all an indication of the passion behind this title, I think we’ll be in for something really appealing to at least some sim pilots.
Watch the game reveal video below, visit the Slitherine website and learn about this title, or check out the Steam Store entry for Scramble: Battle of Britain.
Stormbirds 
Im happy to live in a time where all kind of really spesific games is possible! 😁
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Absolutely! Some great options out there. Sometimes there isn’t time or your full PC to load up a multi-hour DCS or IL-2 session but you can play this for 20 minutes on the go. I’m excited by that!
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Looks fun! I played a game called The Few several years back that did something similar, but this looks like it has may more dimension and complexity. I like turn-based tactics and I like Spitfires, so I bet I’ll like this.
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This sounds like a good fit for you for sure. I’ll be sure to report more on it when new details are released.
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I think fans of this blog will find something to enjoy in Scramble 😉
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That looks really interesting. It’s like practicing in tacview. I love it. Release day purchase for sure. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
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Happy to share! A playable TacView does seem like an interesting way to think about it. Should be fun!
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Looks interesting. It reminds me of Achtung Spitfire and Over the Reich from the 90s. They weren’t in 3D, but quite fun nonetheless.
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I had never heard of these. Over the Reich definitely has some similarities! Now I’m going to watch some videos and see if there is anything for inspiration 😉
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Good find! I really like the idea of mixing turn-based mode and flight simulation 🙂
But I wonder exactly how it’s played, I’m curious to see some actual gameplay of this. Dogfighting is all about observing the enemy and reacting immediately, so it should ideally be successive rounds in each turn (like RPG games). But that’s not what I understand from the video or the explanations here.
If the physics are plausible, it could be an interesting complement to TacView.
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Looks like they missed the Regia Aeronautica aircraft 😆
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