Hammer & Sickle

Hammer & Sickle

Hammer & Sickle is a turn-based strategy game with role-playing elements that uses the Silent Storm engine and universe. The year is 1949, the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union is looming and both sides are worried about the thought of nuclear war. The player takes on the role of a Soviet commando on a covert mission to meet a contact man in Allied-occupied Germany. However, the meeting goes wrong, as the protagonist has no proper support, equipment or identification papers. Behind the Allied-occupied lines, the player must try to stop a renegade third party that wants to start World War III between the US and Russia. Players can choose to start with one of 6 player classes: Soldier, Grenadier, Scout, Sniper, Medic, and Engineer. Also, as the game progresses, there is the option to recruit additional characters to expand the group's abilities. The game itself offers a branching storyline, in which the player's actions and interactions with NPCs can have serious consequences later on. For example, an intelligent character can talk his way out of a situation, and killing allied soldiers can later lead to more patrols and shift the situation towards World War III. Hammer & Sickle also features strong squad-based combat and adopts the turn-based engine from Silent Storm. Players spend action points each turn to perform various actions in combat, while the enemy does the same. The engine also models realistic-looking physics with ragdoll animations, bullet ricochets and destructible environments. As for equipment, there are 90 weapons and variants that can be found or bought.