Spirits of Steel
A downloadable game for Windows
Spirits of Steel is a game about the Second World War. Play as a country, leading it to either collapse or to glory as the coming war looms overhead.
Background:
The game was originally created as an experiment after I wanted to play Hearts of Iron 4, but noticed there was no equivalent competitors for a lesser price. Over time, it developed it's own identity as an arcade strategy game, perfect for playing during a short break.
Special thanks to the fans of this game who have made it as big as it is, and continue to be active in the community.
Controls:
W/A/S/D or UP/LEFT/DOWN/RIGHT = Camera Controls
+/- = Game Speed
ESC = Menu
Left Click = UI Controls
Right Click = Division Controls
Space = Political Decision Tree
Download
Install instructions
1. Download the zip file
2. Unpack the zip file
3. Press "main.exe"
Development log
- Major Update 1Aug 04, 2023
Comments
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Is the game gonna have in game achievements?
do you have a release date on your mind or no yet?
Late December / early January is the hope. Solid progress is being made, just bogged down by midterms right now.
Also, the release version will not be the final version of the game, I'm committed to doing a few updates (though it'll no longer be my main project).
Ok cool! is are balkan counties gonna have focus trees?
Could you please add a Font on the countrys and make it fullscreen? The Game is really great.
The real time mecanic makes it too hard to fight any wars with big nations they just teleport their units randomly.
Yeah, the sequel adds water tiles as opposed to teleporting in between any tile adjacent to the water. It also has a resource system to slow down combat.
Hopefully that fixes it? You can also pause the game to micro if it's causing issues.
gavgrub Will the second game have online ? Will it have the ability to make own maps?
As of present, I have no plans to include multiplayer in the sequel.
It is possible to make your own maps, but there is no UI for it. You basically fill in a map on paint and put some information into text files. I'll make a tutorial on my YouTube channel when it comes out.
it wont open and my fire walls keeps blocking it can you please fix that bug?
Your computer throwing up the fire wall is not a bug; its kind of expected considering you're downloading an executable off the internet. You can press the button to ignore the warning.
thanks for the tip
Also how do i play as cyprus or like ex yugoslav nations?
I think that Cyprus is releasable by the UK but I don't believe the Yugoslav nations are.
hey im a huge fan of the game from the Balkans i would like to suggest in spirits of steel 2 to add an option to take some provinces and not the whole country. Also i found a way to mod the game and working on a ww1 mod.
Yeah, I'm working on a peace deal mechanic for the new game. I've added wars between factions, so it can get pretty messy when you have 20+ countries fighting each other.
Very cool that you're modding the game, just be sure to give me credit if you end up posting it anywhere. I assume you're talking about filling in the starting map? I've actually made the starting conditions of the game really easy to change / share through folders with some information in text files and some painted maps, so I imagine you'll really enjoy that if you're already messing around with SOS.
Great war looking great ! Thanks for the reply and ofc if i ever post the mod ill give the credit . Also the way i mod the game is with asesprite . Also one last question will more balkan nations like greece , albania, bulgaria or Turkey / ottomans have focus trees?
PIZ update edit scenario
Here's a screenshot from the new game to prove that I am, in fact, working on it.
Sorry it's taking so long, I had a rough semester last spring, but now that I'm in university, I have a lot of excuses to work on personal projects.
Check back around Christmas time.
moustache man behaviour
Idea for Spirits Of Steel(the next version): The ability to name saves. Like right now I have two saves(Greater British Raj and The Great Russian SFSR), but every time I save, it automatically saves with the current time. Normally, I would have to get the new save, delete the old one and rename the new save, and it's a bit tedious. And if there was an ability to name saves, I could just put in the name I want and Windows would replace the old save with the new one.
Thanks in advance!
Also there is a bug where clicking "Exit to Menu" brings you to the country select screen instead of the main menu, plese fix this in the next edition of Spirits Of Steel :)
Good idea, will include.
Did you pray today?
Vatican City world conquest goes hard
Long Live Greater Austria
(and rip my stability)
Can you give me the source code of this?
Sorry but I'm not comfortable giving out any code for this game. However, if you'd like me to explain how any systems work, I'd be okay with that.
Sure, I would like for you to explain how the system works.
Which? The game was a pretty big project considering that I don't use a game engine - what do you want to know about.
nice game concept, i tried playing as spain, there didn't seem to be much to do. How will the spanish civil war be implemented in the semi sequal. also i think you could add diffrent music for each major nation in the sequal.
very cool 👍
I'm a player from China, can you launch Chinese? If you can, then I'd appreciate i
Hi, not entirely sure what you mean by this comment, as your grammar is a little broken (I speak french as a second language, I know the struggle) but I assume you're talking about either content for china or translating the game to Mandarin / Cantonese, so I'll answer both just incase.
Firstly, I would like to say that I'm not working on this project anymore, in light of me working on the sequel. Any suggestions I get are being considered for Spirits of Steel 2 and not Spirits of Steel.
Translating to other languages:
I love the idea of translating my games into other languages, especially Chinese languages like mandarin or Cantonese, and I would put in the effort to do so if I could. Unfortunately, I only speak english and french, so those are the only two languages I could actively work on. I don't trust google translate / chatGPT enough to translate the game for me without oversight, and the friends I have who speak other languages only speak french, german, polish, hindi, and punjabi. It is unfortunate, but I don't see a future where I do a mandarin / Cantonese version of the game.
Chinese country content:
I always wanted to do content for China in Spirits of Steel. In my opinion, the warlord era (fall of the Qing dynasty to rise of the CCP) has some of the coolest history I've ever read. Though, despite it being a very sizable time span in the most populated country on earth, there does not seem to be a large amount of reputable sources about actual events that occurred during this period of time. Most sources contradict each other, so it's very hard to grasp what actually happened. I'm 100% convinced that the current map of china within the game is a farse for the time period which only vaguely represents what was actually happening. Also, being Canadian, I don't really learn much about the pacific and chinese fronts in school, as my country wasn't involved in that part of the war. Though I'm still committed to working on more content for china, it'll just take me longer to do then most other places.
TLDR:
Yes to content for China, probably not for a translation
Thank you so much
what game engine
I don't program with a game engine. The game was made in python with the graphics library pygame, though I really can't recommend it as python is incredibly slow.
how do i declare war?
Just click on your soilder and click it to a land you want to invade
MURICAAAAA
How do I save a game BTW?
EDIT: I just got "Terrorists from Sweden attacked one of our monuments" as Japan
PewDiePie... why would you do such a thing?
Therapist: Greater Peru isn't real, he can't hurt you
Greater Peru:
Maybe add more political decision, like French commune, or Britiain in the axis
Development on SOS is done because the backend of the game is terrible, but a (somewhat) sequel is in the works. All of that is coming and more, just under a different context.
can you add division desiner
Update Please
;)
Killed naz germany as finland feeling great
For some reason after a certain amount of time the ai stops invading other countries
yea i think that just happens because they finish their focus tree and have no reason for further expansion
Thx because I dont play or understand hoi4
does the military tech provide any bonuses to troops or nah?
Hey there just wanted to say i'm a big fan of this concept as someone who played a lot of Hearts of Iron IV. In my opinion the Focus Tree System of Hearts of Iron IV is not utilised enough in other games so it's amazing that you implemented although in a more basic form. I hope you do a sequel to this game with more in-depth Gameplay and Focus Trees i would love to contribute to such a project although i'm not that experienced in coding i could contribute in for example researching. Anyways hope you have a fantastic day ^^
Hi, sorry for the super late response. Thanks for the offer but I prefer to work alone or with people I know irl.
I will say, originally I wasn't going to have Political Decision Trees in SOS2, but if that was so much of the appeal in SOS1, I'll definitely do it. Though I will say, trees for each individual country will probably not happen. It's too much work to make a unique tree for every country under every circumstance for the country. Instead, I plan on working on a political tree with unique branches depending on the state of the country. For example, all communist nations will get a special branch that only appears for them, or all ex-colonial countries, or all European countries, etc.
Lumping together countries like this, while removing some of the appeal of unique content for every country, will make every country playable and hopefully create some interesting situations as every country acts to complete broad objectives rather then five working to achieve specific objectives.
I'm open to feedback though, love to hear what you think about it.
Hello! i am someone who really would like to play the game, but for some reason, its telling me there is an error in the script. I've tried a few times again but same result. As i've seen from people with a similar bug, it may be that I'm not using windows, note i am on Windows 10. Is there anyway to fix this problem myself?
Sincerely, -Jake.
Yeah, I've seen this before, I just don't really know the cause of it. Make sure that you have the most up to date version of the game (major update 1) and maybe try redownloading it. If that doesn't work, I'll look more into it. If you could share the error message with me, that would be great.
As I was reading the error, it showed there wasn't a certain png in a file or directory in the folder within the AppData folder with the main.exe in it, however nothing else. So I copied and pasted the files from the .zip except for the main.exe into the file, and it worked perfectly. Thank you. You asking me to read the error lead to my curiosity to the problem. I had a sigh of relief that it wasn't something wrong with the code. Have a great day :).
Love it, one question though: how do i access the military tech tree page
If you go into the political decision tree and press a/d it'll go into the military tech tree. Though, I should note that the military tech tree was never fully implemented so it doesn't actually do anything.
Oh. OK, thanks anyway.
I love it
Thanks!
i'm player of age of history 2 . And i want to say dis game is amazing
Thanks!
I defeated the Soviet Union as Germany :)
Great job! I know the game tends to get very micro heavy when going up against large nations, so this is cool to see.
Thanks for the compliment! Also, are you ever gonna make a major update 2?
Major update 2 will never be released, but that's not to say I've given up on spirits of steel as a whole. No promises, but I am definitely working on something.
Why
The backend for SOS is terrible. I never intended it to be a long term project, and as such I cut a lot of corners in development to make it easier for me in the short term.
Primarily, the main element of the game, the political decision trees, are implemented horribly and it takes too long to add new decisions to the game.
Believe me, what I have cooking up is going to make this look like nothing in comparison with another year of experience + everything I learned from SOS.
what are the nations I need to form the HRE
If I remember correctly, it's italy, belgium, czechia, netherlands, switzerland, and austria. It's been a long time since I made this game though, so I'm not 100% sure.
game is fun but all non major natoes have the same.
Yeah, (and tbh most of the major nations have the same political tree) it mostly has to do with the way that political trees are coded and how it takes so long to add new decisions to the game. I'm looking into ways of replacing the old system with something a little more dynamic, though it will be completely different to the current one. It won't ever come to this game, but maybe for a future project.
is there any possible way I can play this on a Chromebook?
Hello, sorry but the way I made the game makes it impossible to be played on webbrowser, at least to my knowledge. I don't think that chromebooks can run executables, so it may be that you just won't be able to play the game.
Very sorry about that, I'll try to keep that in mind for future projects.
does anyone have a idea for how to play?
try a virtual machine
How do you add factories again? edit: nvm
click 4 and click left to add factories