Sherman COMMANDER!!

[JasonPratt]

In this game, you command General Sherman in his drive to... I mean through... uh, Germany?

...oh, wait, wrong war.

In this game, you are maybe picking targets on a rail shooter sort of? It looks super-neat, and I may very well be oversimplifying it due to this being allergy season in West TN (home of all allergies) and my brain has a lot of gook to think through right now.

[Destraex]

Wow. Good find. This looks interesting. I don't think it will replace "tank crew" but it looks like fun.

[Destraex]

ok. Just noticed it is a playway game. This is probably just a mock up for an idea for a game in that case to see how many are interested?
I like the way they use infantry for recon in the trailer though. It's steam release is late 2022.... allegedly.

[Gusington]

That looks excellent. Wishlisted. Thanks Pratt!

[JasonPratt]

To be fair, our friend Asid over at Dogs of War found this, not me.  O:-)

I'll be curious to see how/if development proceeds. The more I think of it, the more a cinematic detailed 'rail-shooter' might fit fine with a Sherman commander, sending orders out to his attached infantry etc. You can kind of do this the other way around (infantry commanding an attached tank as part of your squad) in the Brothers in Arms games, which are more obviously squad-based command shooters.

Or putting it another way, the recent radio-commander type games are real-time map plotters but hardly shooters or sims, so transferring that over into a 3D action world might very well look and play like this!

Now imagine the devs extrapolating this concept for different 'campaigns' in different areas of the war, or in different wars. French Char-bis commander?! Maybe a multipart Operation E / Crusader back and forth for the Italians and the British in North Africa using 1940s tech? Vietnam Sherman Commander? Korea Sherman Commander? Golan Heights Commander (on either/both sides)?!

[Gusington]

^All of those variants you just typed out moisten my loins. Has there ever been a tank-centric game set in Korea? Golan Heights Commander would be epic.

[hellfish6]

So this looks like a cinematic rendering of what someone wants the game to be. Not what the game is or will be. This isn't real game play... so how can you get excited about it yet?

[Gusington]

Oh, pardon me for getting excited. My bad :/

[JasonPratt]

I can be hopeful about the concept. I'm unsure how much of it is a cinematic rendering; there are a lot of obvious gameplay user-interface things going on, so at the very least they're rendering what they want the gameplay and UI to be like.

As I noted originally, it looks like an on-rail game to some extent.

[hellfish6]

\ I'm unsure how much of it is a cinematic rendering;\

The entire thing looks pre-rendered in cinematic software to me and designed to pass itself off, deceitfully, as something like a depiction of actual in-game action - maybe using actual assets for the game, maybe not. But if in two or three years the actual game releases and looks anything like this video I'll offer my apologies and buy your copy for you. Save this post!

[bobarossa]

The developer's only game on Steam is a companion app (runs opponent AI) for U Boat the Tabletop Game.  They have 4 other games in development with Sherman Commader the farthest out (end of 2022).  Not sure I'd hold me breath on that level of detail unless they hired a bunch of experienced people. 

[The_Admiral]

Although this process has the merit of leading to rather acceptable, if not sometimes actually brilliant games (there is obviously a lot of work by game designers for making these trailers alone), let's say the overall problem with Playway lies not so much the results than in the ruthless tactics that lead them there, including sometimes at the expense of actual indie games devs (in the latest case of Manor Lords) and obvious abuse of Steam, Facebook & Youtube rules (aka showing concept art instead of gameplay disguised in a trailer prototype - which is against Steam rules ; having randomly-generated fake people on Facebook being "female" PR influencers ; paying Youtube streamers for showing the games without having them saying so, etc...). At the end of the day they could very well reach the same objectives by doing all this in a courteous manner and using fair methods. Instead they choose to make all these nice games in an interesting manner (which would have benefited much from the former Steam greenlight process of old actually) but pitch & sell them to you with zero conscience (but considering they are a listed company in Poland they have their reasons for indiscriminate growth as long as these platforms will maintain their laissez-faire stance...)

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCarless/20210426/380423/What_PlayWay_should__and_shouldnt__teach_us_about_game_publishing.php