Battle for Iwo Jima simulates the Invasion and desperate fighting for the island from Feb 19th, 1945 to March 26th, 1945. You take command of the US Marines and will test your ability to do better than those brave Marines did back in 1945.

In-Game Background Story

The game looks to recreate the same problems and situations faced by the marines in Feb/March 1945. Like those brave marines, you need to use your numbers to your advantage and keep rotating your tired units out of the front line.

At the same time, you need to capture the objectives in the same timescale as historically happened. This is really tough to achieve without taking heavy casualties.

Gameplay info

Historically the battle lasted 35 days. So in the game, you have a maximum of 35 turns to capture all the objectives and destroy all the enemy units. Your units suffer fatigue whenever they are fired upon by the defending Japanese.

The defending Japanese can fire on your units when they move into range (Opportunity fire), as part of the Japanese combat phase, as a surprise counterattack in your attack phase or during the night phase.


The Japanese are hidden from you until you move into range and you never truly know their strength. Every game the Japanese will have different strength and this adds replayability and variance with each replay.

The marines can provide support to some of their units every turn and this helps reduce the casualties they can take. In addition, you can use armor to support marine attacks.

Key features

This game really shows how hard it was to take the island in 1945. The marines had numerical and firepower advantage and yet it still took them 35 days to clear the island.

The map of Iwo Jima is based on pre-invasion US maps. The numerous ways the Japanese can inflict casualties and fatigue on the marines give you a feeling of the constant stress they faced being in the frontlines and so close to the enemy in the actual battle.

Each turn is made up of several phases:

– Marine Support

– Marine Movement

– Japanese Artillery

– Japanese Combat

– Marine Combat

– Marine Replacements

– Night Phase

The objectives are based on key positions on the island. The time limit placed on each objective is what really drives the marines forward and adds pressure to the player as they try to win the game.

About developer

Yobowargames was started in 2017 and focuses on small historical simulations allowing a player to complete a game in a few evenings. This is the 4th game released and the first based on a battle set in the Pacific. You can find out more at

http://www.yobowargames.com/

http://www.yobowargames.com/iwo-jima/

Release date & platforms

Released on 4th March 2020 on the Steam platform for Windows only. Below the video trailer and link to Steam page.