Not One Step Back: Stalingrad

About this game

September 1942. The German Sixth Army is advancing through Stalingrad. Your battalion holds five street blocks of rubble, steel, and broken concrete somewhere between the factory district and the river. The Volga is behind you. There is nowhere left to go. Stavka has sent orders. They make no sense. You should follow them anyway or maybe not at all and risk a bullet in the head from the Battalion's Commissar. Not One Step Back is a solo wargame where you command a Soviet battalion in the street-by-street defense of Stalingrad, fighting a two-front war simultaneously. One against the Germans grinding through your sectors with infantry and Panzers, and one against a centralized Soviet command structure that will shoot you for losing too much ground they ordered you to hold. Every round the Germans come and your orders arrive regardless of what is happening at the front. Following them costs you militarily. Ignoring them costs you politically. Both tracks must stay above zero. Lose either one and the game ends immediately, the Battalion shattered, or its commander shot. Not one step back. Not one.

What it feels like