I made a war game. It is called Tykkimäki 1789 and it lives at apn201.itch.io/tykkimaki-1789. You command the Swedish guns on the hill that gave the Kouvola amusement park its name.
On 28 June 1789, Gustav III broke the Russians on the Utti heath in four hours. The Swedish guns were laid on the slope of a hill beside the road — and that is how the hill got its name. Cannon Hill. Tykkimäki.
The game is a pocket-sized battle. The map stands still and you draw your orders in ink, like a coach at a tactics board. When the sand-glass turns, the troops march on their own — and all you can still do is the one thing a general really could do in the moment: serve the guns on the hill. Every shot throws up smoke that soon hides your own line from you.
What makes it different
- Ink is command capacity. An order costs more the further a regiment stands from the King — a messenger has to ride there.
- The guns are your only real-time weapon. Lead a moving target; a steady line watches the bounce and opens ranks, a marching column gets raked.
- Powder smoke blinds both sides. The fog of war is literal, and it is your own fault.
- The King is on the field. He rallies wavering regiments and gives one speech per battle — but if he is cut off, the battle ends there.
- No hit points, only nerve. Regiments do not die, they break and flee, which is how these battles were actually decided.
Today’s battle
The whole world plays the same deployment each day: same terrain, same wind, same Russian plan. Compare your glory in the comments.
The campaign
Three days of June 1789 — the Kymi crossing, the skirmish at Mäki-Kouvola and the Battle of Utti. Learn the war one day at a time.
Hand-written: no engine, no libraries, no loading screen. The whole game is 43 kilobytes.
On the history: casualty figures vary by source and the game says so plainly. A “What really happened?” card in the menu separates fact from game mechanic.
Leave a Reply