Unity of Command is the wargame that non-wargamers should play. At least in my eyes – Tim Stone has his doubts, and he knows more than I. It’s a difficult game, but not because of an overabundance of numbers or an obtuse interface like many of its kin. It’s unforgiving AI and the need for clever battlefield tactics that will see your men falter and die in its campaign, and which will keep you coming back for more. Like wot Kieron thought.

Gadzooks! Now it seems there’s to be a sequel.

It’s not been announced, exactly. The developer blog post that mentions it says that it’s not ready for “a proper media announcement just yet.” But I’m a renegade investigative journalist, me. I hang out in car parks to have secret meetings, and while I’m waiting check RSS feeds on my phone. That’s why I get the hottest scoops, such as this one from November 14th, which I saw while reading a week old Flare Path over the weekend and thought, “Cor, that deserves a post of its own.”

The biggest, most obvious thing: Unity of Command 2 or Unity of Command Too or whatever it’s called will have a 3D engine, built from scratch by the dev team. Here’s the only teaser image released, which is said to be a long way from done. “Don’t get too invested in the graphic”, says the post, though I’m glad to see it’s still got head-and-shoulders men staring terrifyingly across the landscape, like helmet-wearing Titans.

The post also says, more interestingly:

We are adding significantly to the game’s repertoire of mechanics, while hopefully not overcooking it. This will enable us to represent things like amphibious landings, para drops, intelligence effects, some naval action etc. The new system should be more versatile, so we could represent much more of WWII in it, and not just the maneuver-rich campaigns on the Eastern Front. The campaign system is very much in flux right now. It’s possibly the weakest part of the original game, so I feel like we need to offer something awesome this time around. There’s no shortage of ideas, it’s more of a question of “which concept is right” for the game. I’ll be sure to post about campaign/metagame issues a lot in these progress updates.

Can such a tightly designed wargame add more mechanics without toppling over? That appears at least to be on the development team’s mind as well. Apparently they’ll be blogging their progress monthly over at the game’s site, though it’ll all be graphics stuff for a while to come.