Before Colonel Talvela's magnificent counterattack at Tolvajarvi, the disastrous (for the invading side) encirclement at Suomussalmi, and the "miracle of Summa", the Finnish Defense Forces had a single task – to survive the Soviet onslaught. Considering the Red Army's overwhelming numbers and serious technological edge, for most of the world the outcome seemed clear and inevitable: the redrawing of the USSR's Western border. Taipale was the easternmost sector of the Karelian Isthmus frontline. The brunt of the Soviet attack was focused in the West, on the way to Viipuri, and that's where it made sense for the Finns to make a stand – in the East, the Soviet High Command expected an easy breakthrough. Nonetheless, two whole Rifle Divisions – 49th and 150th – were devoted to the initial crossing of the Taipaleenjoki river, and against such overwhelming numbers, the Finnish pickets retreated with minimal resistance, emboldening the Soviets. It was a trap. The Finnish artillery was well-camouflaged and already zeroed in at the crossings – the barrage at Taipale decimated the invading force. A day later, an even more disastrous crossing attempt took place, this time with amphibious tanks: out of the nine pontoons spanning the river only four survived, the soldiers were lit up with searchlights and riddled with bullets, while most of the tanks ended up dragged down by the strong river current. Only 30 Red Army troopers made it across the river – scared and confused, they were all taken prisoner. By then, the Soviet troops at Taipale were completely demoralized, believing (rightly so) that their supposed punitive expedition against hapless Finns had become a suicide mission. It would take almost two weeks for the Soviet High Command to even consider advancing at Taipale again, this time with 30,000 personnel and more than a hundred tanks, including flamethrower ones. And once again, it was a miserable failure. Expertly concealed positions helped the Finns survive a devastating but practically blind-firing artillery barrage. Then, accurate anti-tank gun fire disabled most of the Soviet armored fist, allowing the great and terrible Red Army only a few hundred meters of progress. Several similar assaults followed, met with similar resistance, and similarly disastrous results. The incredible success of the Taipale defense earned high praise from Mannerheim. In his own words, "I did not think that my men were so good, or that the Russians could be so bad".
Gameplay
In Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty, the Battle of Taipale is the second operation of the historical campaign. In this scenario, your task is to hold the line against the Red Army attack. Then you are to counterattack and recapture some of the previously lost positions. There is also a number of side objectives, build around eliminating the enemy commanders and capturing some extra trophies. This battle happens early in the campaign, so naturally, your army is not very strong and experienced yet. That is why it is critical to use the terrain advantage of being behind a river and exploit the Red Army’s reckless attacks to overcome the enemy and maybe even strengthen your troops with extra trophies and combat experience. You will definitely need all of that in your next battle.
It is also critical to use your very limited air force wisely to avoid unnecessary losses and keep your planes going for later battles in the face of a numerically superior foe.
Please, let us know: would you like to see more scenario overviews from the upcoming Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty in future dev updates?
Units In Spirit of Liberty #2 | Landsverk L-182 Armored Car
Landsverk L-182 was a unique Swedish reconnaissance vehicle. Quite literally, since only one of its type was ever produced and sold.
The lucky buyer was Finland, who acquired the vehicle in 1936 as part of the attempted motorization of its army. Based on Landsverk's dependable L-180 design and armed with Finnish-produced weaponry, it was a modern enough vehicle for its time. Several more were supposedly on the way, when suddenly the looming threat of the Soviet Union became a clear and present danger, and the young republic had to mobilize everything it had.
Miraculously, this one-of-a-kind vehicle operating in a theater notoriously hostile towards vehicles managed to survive the entire Winter War, and into the Continuation War a year later. Still, like most Finnish equipment at the time, despite its incredibly skilled operators it quickly became morally and factually obsolete. In late 1941, as more and more Soviet armored cars were being taken as trophies, Landsverk L-182 was finally allowed to retire.
In the game
In Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty we highlight the scarcity of the Finnish military equipment. So, you will get only one core Landsverk L-182 unit at the start of campaign and would not be able to acquire more. However, there will be Soviet recon cars BA-10 and BA-10M that you have probably already seen in the previous Strategic Mind titles. These are arguably one of the best early recon cars in the series, since they have a powerful 45 mm gun as well, and could attack early tank models successfully. So, instead of getting more Landsverks, you could try and get your hands on some pretty good Soviet models to fill the needs of your Arny with good reconnaissance cars. The Landsverk, though, is really helpful and plays important role early in the war, when your equipment is the most scrace. It could also remain at your side later in the campaign if you keep the unit alive, level it up, or even assign a hero on it, making it quite powerful instead of being obsolete.
Let us know if you are looking forward to using this unique vehicle in your campaign.
War in Ukraine - despatch 11 | Lots of news about our projects
Hello
The last few weeks were extremely action-packed: we released Ukraine War Stories, Slitherine posted the first Dev log about Headquarters: World War II, we have some news about Spirit of Liberty coming up - and the last 2 weeks were hell in terms of power shortages and internet connection problems, but we keep fighting!
First of all, about the current situation in Kyiv.
Starting last week, there were a number of Russian missile strikes on the power supply system across entire Ukraine. That resulted in scheduled power outages, sometimes disrupting our working process. We decided that this week we would adjust our working schedule to come to work when there are no outages, but there was a new wave of missile and drone attacks and more damage to the power supply. As a result, the schedule was changed - and it is now not suitable for office work - you get only 5 hours in a row. So, we adapted and decided to work from home with flexible hours, until the situation improves, or until we upgrade the power infrastructure at our office. Right now, we have 5 hours of power supply, then 4 hours without power, then again 5 hours of power supply, and so on. The schedule is different for different parts of the city though.
Despite all these troubles we are resolved to overcome them and keep working passionately on our projects.
Headquarters: World War II - Dev log 1
We invite you to have a look at the first Dev log on our upcoming title, published by Slitherine Software. Exploring some core game mechanics in this one: https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=983611
Ukraine War Stories release
We are really proud that despite the ongoing war in Ukraine we managed to make a free project that covers the first month of the war from civilians' point of view. The release on October 18th was quite successful, especially in Japan which became the top 1 country by the number of players. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1985510/Ukraine_War_Stories/
Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty is back in the spotlight
The whole team is really thankful for your support - that helps us keep our spirits high and continue working hard on the upcoming games.
With Best Regards from Kyiv Starni Games team
Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty - our work continues despite the war
Hello
It has been a long time since we gave you an update on Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty. Now, we will be providing regular information about how the development progresses, and what content will be in the game.
Our whole team is located in Kyiv, where we are in the middle of the Russian war against Ukraine. Right now, there are scheduled power outages, so we have to work from home with individual working hours. We try to squeeze at least 8 hours of work per day in between the power outages to keep our development going at a steady pace. Also, it is really hard to gather our English voice over cast in Kyiv, since most people we worked with have left the country, while those who remain in Ukraine are very busy with war-related work. Despite all these disfficulties, we are trying our best to finish the game’s development and successfully release it in 2023.
The script and the narrative for the project was written before the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, but still, we cannot help noticing way too many historical similarities. The obvious one being large USSR/Russia invading much smaller Finland/Ukraine, who fights very bravely for its people, lands and free will. Both agressors invent many false calims about threats Finland/Ukraine presented as a casus belli. The list could continue for hours… Let us know if you would like to learn more about that. I think it is really ironic that the dev team known for making a series of wargames covering World War II events now finds itself amidst the biggest war in Europe since World War II.
For future updates on our Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty progress, what are you personally most interested in: 1) Units overview 2) Scenarios overview 3) Historical characters overview 4) More music tracks being made public 5) Similarities between Winter / Continuation War 1939-1944 and War in Ukraine 2022 6) How the dev team copes with the ongoing war in Ukarine 7) Developer’s gameplay of the first few scenarios
Please, let me know what you are interested in the most and we will take that into account when preparing next updates about the game.
The first post on units will be out soon.
Looking forward to reading your feedback
With Best Regards from Kyiv Starni Games team
Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty release moved to 2023
Hello
It is Oleksandr speaking. We have to move the release date for Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty to 2023. I am really sorry we could not deliver the game by the previously estimated date, but we had a lot of force majeure factors stacked against us, the key issue obviously being the War in Ukraine.
We did not have a previous record of postponed releases and hope to avoid such incidents in the future as well. We value every community member, and we know that there are people waiting for the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty release. Our key goal right now is to make sure we deliver a good game as promised, even if at a later date.
The good news is, you do not have to worry about us abandoning the project, or something like that. We did have to stop working on it temporarily, but now the development process is being resumed. We still have to solve different complications as we go, such as gathering our VO cast in Kyiv despite the war, and so on. That is why we cannot name a specific date or month for the release yet - many things have to be considered. All we know is that the work is resumed, and it is in our best interests to finish the project as soon as we can without compromising on its quality.
Another piece of good news is that our team is growing, allowing us to step up our production efforts. Right now we are more than 20 people.
We plan to release a clear roadmap for the project in autumn 2022 and will provide monthly updates on our progress starting in October. We might have some good news in store for you still in 2022.
In many aspects, the game was close to completion before the war started, but in terms of VO, cinematics, and localization the development is lagging behind, that is why we will need quite some time to catch up, as these are lengthy processes.
We hope for your understanding and patience and will do everything we can to deliver a well-made game that will take a proper place in the Strategic Mind saga.
We will announce our Dev Q&A soon, where I will record a broadcast answering all of your questions about the team or any of our games. Feel free to ask us any questions you like, by filling this form: https://forms.gle/mhoQ5wZdZFZSo2SX7
With best regards from Kyiv Oleksandr and the Starni Games team
War in Ukraine - despatch 6 | Ukrainian Games Festival
Hello guys!
I will start with a bit of company news. Last week we have moved to a new office, just across the street from the old one, where we had been located last 4 years. We are now hiring more people and having 15 people in a 49 sq m room was already not very comfortable. The new office is significantly larger and is overall a better facility. With our team growing to 20+ people that is just what we need.
It also does not have a significant impact on our budget, since after the war started rental and real estate prices in Kyiv dropped dramatically, sometimes as much as 50%. So we found a much better place for a similar cost. It probably would become more expensive in time, but it allows us to hire more people now and reinforce our efforts on all our projects.
Our team is growing now, and we hope that it will speed up our production time and allow us to ensure better quality. It would also enable us to work on larger and more complex projects in the future.
Now to other news.
Ukrainian Games Festival is now live! 24th July is an Independence Day of Ukrainer, and this year it got a dedicated Steam event. Check out over 200 games made by the devs from Ukraine - I bet you would be surprised. More details in our dedicated post here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1381850/view/3255560404150317279
Discounts on all our games end in 2 days During the Ukrainian Games Festival, we have all our games with nice discounts - so it could be a good time to add something new to your collection.
Stay tuned for future despatches.
With best regards from Kyiv Starni Games team
Ukrainian Games Festival is now live!
Hello
We are extremely excited to announce that all our games participate in Ukrainian Games Festival (August 22-28) - an event featuring over 200 games made by Ukrainian devs, that is timed to happen during the Independence Day of Ukraine (August 24).
All our released games are having nice discounts, while all future projects showcase their page and will hopefully gather some extra audience.
Please check out the event - there are loads of cool games: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38747278-Indie-Cup/sale/ukrainiangames2022
We have also gathered a quick overview of our participation in the event:
Make sure you check out other Ukrainian games - we bet you would be pleasantly surprised!
Please, let us know in the comments which Ukranian game or games you like the best!
With best regards from Kyiv, Starni Games team
Listen to the Säkkijarven Polkka tack from the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty
Hello, guys!
Today, we reveal Säkkijärven polkka - the second historical track from the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty soundtrack, recorded by Daraba studio. Säkkijärven polkka is a well-known Finnish folk tune that got new life and meaning during the dramatic events of World War II. It got the lyrics sometimes sung with the tune, which stated that while Säkkijärvi itself might have been lost (ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940), the Finns at least still had the polka.
Listen to the "Säkkijärven polkka" track on our YouTube channel: [previewyoutube="qa8BnE0QBU4;full"]
During the Continuation War, the Finnish Army discovered that the retreating Soviets had scattered radio-controlled mines throughout the re-captured city of Viipuri. These mines were set off when a three-note chord was played on the frequency the radio was tuned to. In order to thwart the enemy's goal, Fins started transmitting the Säkkijärvi polka, so that the frequency of the triads used by the enemy was interfered with to the point that the mines were completely unusable.
The Polka surely bolstered the troops' morale during the hardships of the protracted war.
Thus, this boisterous folk tune became the war-time song and is highly regarded to this day.
If you want to get access to the whole Strategic Mind series soundtrack with all the high-quality recordings - feel free to check out our Franchise soundtrack on Steam:
Christmas holidays are in full swing and it is high time to look back and summarize everything we have done throughout 2021.
This is a special Christmas Wallpapers for the Strategic Mind series. Subscribe to Starni Games newsletter to get this wallpaper for your desktop and other cool stuff. Please check your promotion emails not to miss the letter from us.
3 March | Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty announcement
Early into the year, we finalized our plans for the next game in the Strategic Mind series - we did niche games before, but now we dared to start working on a niche game with a niche setting. We really hope that you guys will like the project and support it.
21 April | Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom Story Trailer and release date
In April we have finally set the exact release date for Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom and shared a Story trailer for the upcoming release.
[previewyoutube="ol8CWwA2qvI;full"]
21 May | Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom OUT NOW!
In may we have successfully released the Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom. You can check out the game and its Cinematic trailer following the link below:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1381850/view/3059611965013023855 Strategic Mind: Fight for Freedom is the newest and definitely most well-polished game across the series. We can only hope and work very hard to make sure that the Spirit of Liberty would be able to set the bar even higher.
8 July | Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty - Prologue 1939 Store Page is Open!
We have decided to experiment a bit and release a free Prologue app this time that will have several operations from the upcoming Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty for everyone to explore for free. And if you like the game you could purchase the full version and keep playing from the same point using save files from the Prologue.
Due to the pandemics, many big gaming events moved online and it allowed us to participate in this year’s Gamescom, even if only online. Here is the report:
We have carried out a survey to figure out the most important game mechanics and aspects of the game. We are very grateful to everyone who participated in the survey. Here are the results:
26 October | Gameplay Trailer for the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty is Out!
As always we produce all our trailers and promo materials in-house, meaning that on one hand, it is not done by some fancy trailer-guru team, but on the other hand, it is done by the dev team that is very passionate about the project and tries their best to present it to the player’s community. Check out the trailer if you have not seen it yet:
[previewyoutube="1-hj1I5Gh-Q;full"]
29 November | SM: Fight for Freedom won the 'Best Strategy Game' award at Chainsaw Festival 2021
This award came to us as a pleasant surprise - we often participate in various events and competitions to showcase the game and are used to keep our expectations low, as our games are very niche and hardcore - so they rarely get lots of attention, as experts usually say something like “well, seems like a really cool game, but not something I would play after I have put in a hard day’s work”.
13 December | Watch the first video Q&A with developers!
This year we have decided that the best way to summarise the year is to answer your questions and record them on video so that everyone can have a look:
[previewyoutube="5o6l50Cush0;full"] We plan to hold the next session like that at the end of February - so if you want your questions answered, you can already send them here: https://forms.gle/1A9Hir4srxXfq2QU6
15 December | Headquarters: World War II - Our New Project in Partnership with Slitherine
The biggest announcement of the year - our new game Headquarters: World War II that will be published by Slitherine. We have been working on this project for quite a while, so we are very happy to finally share it with you and will keep updating you on our progress. Here is more information:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1381850/view/3141821682386771299 Make sure to check out Headquarters: World War II on Steam:
24 December | Listen to the Finlandia Op. 26 tack from the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty
A holiday present from Starni - the largest historical track in the series - the legendary Jean Sibeliuses’ Finlandia Op. 26 - recorded by Daraba studio for your listening pleasure:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1381850/view/5447664788864657474 This year was full of events, and the next one is bound to be even more acton-packed. We are thankful to everyone for your support and wish all the Strategic Mind series’ community happy holidays and the best of luck in the upcoming year 2022. See you next year!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Starni Games team
Listen to the Finlandia Op. 26 tack from the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty
Hello, guys!
Today we reveal the first historical track from the Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty, recorded by Daraba studio. Finlandia Op. 26 is by far the longest and most epic of all the tracks we asked Daraba studio to create for the Strategic Mind series so far. I guess every Fin would know it, but for the rest of the audience here are a few facts from the historical perspective:
"Finlandia, Op. 26, is a tone poem by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The piece was composed for the Press Celebrations of 1899, a covert protest against increasing censorship from the Russian Empire. In order to avoid Russian censorship, Finlandia had to be performed under alternative names at various musical concerts. Titles under which the piece masqueraded were numerous and often confusing —famous examples include "Happy Feelings at the awakening of Finnish Spring", and "A Scandinavian Choral March"."
Listen to the "Finlandia Op. 26" track on our YouTube channel:
[previewyoutube="MkRnCFZdMs8;full"] We want to thank everyone, who purchased Strategic Mind Franchise Soundtrack - your support really helped us get more historical tracks added into the game. We are also very grateful to everyone who participated in the community votes and helped us choose the best tracks. Here is the result of the combined efforts of the community and our team. All Spirit of Liberty tracks will be added to the Strategic Mind Franchise Soundtrack at the game's release.
If you want to get access to the whole Strategic Mind series soundtrack with all the high-quality recordings - feel free to check out our Franchise soundtrack on Steam:
