There are so many engaging and entertaining games set during World War II, because let’s face it war alongside everything else is also fascinating. Whether you just want to shoot your way across the beaches or play military strategist, there’s something to play for all the history buffs out there. Ground of Aces provides something totally new for those seeking a wartime adventure though: air base management. Releasing first in early access, it’s a base building game that already feels feature complete and is a hell of a lot of fun.
After choosing the location of your new military airport, you’ll be given missions that’ll show you how to play. It turns out a lot goes into sending planes out to war, and it’s your job to ensure the war effort is well supplied with top of the line planes and hot shot pilots. You’ll need to get your people building to do this though, all while keeping their morale up in a scary situation.
First up you’ll need an airstrip, which you can choose the material and size of. A basic dirt track is fine for the basic planes you can buy, but to really send out the big guns you’ll need a massive concrete area for take off. The planes also need parking slots, which can be out in the open or placed under shelter for safekeeping. This is all you’ll need to send those birds on missions, but it’s only one part of the elaborate base puzzle.
As a living, breathing base, you’ll also need to look after the blood pumping through everything: your workers. Providing a place to sleep and supplies to eat is the bare minimum, but the team will also appreciate areas to socialise in and comfort items too. There are also things that’ll help them feel safer in this tense situation, like radios that’ll inform you of incoming attacks and alarms that’ll let everyone know to take cover. It takes a whole lot of materials to create these hugely helpful items, but it’s worth it.
To do all this building you’ll need supplies, and you have to gather these yourself. Thankfully you’re in the middle of a forest, with plenty of trees, rocks, and chunks of ore lying about. By clicking and dragging you can highlight a massive area to clear for resources, or if there’s something more specific you want you can mark bits one by one. These materials are then refined at various workbenches, and eventually you’ll have the best bits of fabric and machinery you need to create the base that Britain needs.
For a little while Ground of Aces felt like a pretty cosy experience, but the war soon put a stop to that. At regular intervals you’ll need to help HQ out by sending planes on missions, which require different levels of skill to succeed in. Making sure your planes are suitably fuelled and pilots are suitably rested for this is key especially as the game progresses, and there are also more stressful things to deal with. There’s no way to prevent bombings from occasionally raining down from enemy bombers, and these can ruin everything. Having good shelters and a bit of notice from radios will go a long way here, but regardless of this you’ll still need to rebuild a ruined base and disheartened (at the very least) crew afterwards.
There are loads of elements of Ground of Aces I haven’t been able to fit into this article, too. Stuff like using victory points you get from missions to get new planes and people for the base, the farming you can do to feed everyone, and managing places to store materials and junk. There’s a whole lot to this management game even in its current form, and thankfully it’s never too overwhelming.
When I first jumped into Ground of Aces I was worried that it’d be a bit too complex for my delightfully simple mind to deal with, but the onboarding is just wonderful. You’re taught exactly how all the systems interact through a series of simple objectives, and if you’re ever struggling to understand how to accomplish one of these you just need to hover over it for more details. When you click on a new menu it’ll tell you all about how a specific system works too, which is just wonderful. It’s also easy to see how things work because you get to watch how each of your workers goes to collect a material, brings it to a workbench, then takes it somewhere for construction. It’s all very intuitive because of this, and makes the new player experience all the better.
Even in its current form Ground of Aces is a great base building game, and there’s so much still to come to it. There’s a detailed roadmap on the game’s Steam page that talks about trading with nearby villages, hunting local wildlife, and so so so much more. Regardless of if you play it now or later though, it’s a unique and compelling game that I’d highly recommend.
Ground of Aces is in early access on PC via Steam now.
