by Peter Robbins, 31 July 2025
An older game that’s only recently been released on Steam, WEGO: Stalingrad puts a new spin on the usual boardgame-style-PC-wargame mechanics.
What’s In The Box?!
Game: WEGO World War II: Stalingrad
Developer: Brian Kelly
Publisher: Slitherine Ltd., LLC
Original Release: Dec 02, 2021 on Matrix Games Store
STEAM Release: Jun 25, 2025 on STEAM Store
Topic: WW2, Operations towards Stalingrad.
Scale: “There are two ground scales in the game series—operational and tactical. The operational maps use 2500 meters (~1.5 miles) per hex. The tactical level maps use 500 meters per hex. These maps are used when the scale of the operational map fails to capture the granularity of the historical battle.”
One note to make is that this is a first look at the Steam release version of the wargame. The game was originally released way back in December of 2021. Now we are getting this Steam release recently on Jun 25, 2025. We were provided a press copy, and I’ve put in about 10 hours into the game so far. I like to say that out loud so you can take what I say below with that grain of salt. I don’t understand why they waited so long to release this on Steam, but alas, here it is and the world is a better place for it. It’s a solid game, and it’s nice that it now will reach the Steam player base. Yes, I’m a Steam-er. I do often buy games early on Matrix and then later convert them with Steam Codes using their My Store mechanisms, but another story for another day.
My overall review of this game is, it’s good and it’s worth the price. It’s so good in fact that I’ve gone and bought the prior game it’s based on, WEGO: Desert War , and I’m enjoying that game too. WEGO: Stalingrad is definitely an improvement on the prior, but they have similar wargame engines under the hood. Both are worth owning. Oddly, WEGO: Desert War is not available on Steam, go figure. Doh, don’t know why. I think they are losing out by not putting it there as well.
Let’s look at what WEGO: Stalingrad has to offer and then you can decide for yourself whether it’s a wargame for you.
- First things first, take a look at the primary overview video on the main Store Page here. It is a good quick introduction to the game. Covers a good amount of its features in one go.
- Additionally, take the time to meander the Dev Diary posts by the developer on Steam here. Work your way up from the bottom and read them all. They have good info in them!
The “WEGO” mechanic is explained in the game’s description
WEGOWW2: In many board and computer wargames, one side will move its units and resolve combat, followed by the other side repeating the process. This game mechanic is known as IGOUGO (“I GO YOU GO”). WEGOWW2 is different. WEGO by its nature is about the player’s ability to plan for and manage chaos; to find solutions to perceived challenges and accomplish the mission with the tools at hand. Despite the fog of war…against a thinking opponent who must problem-solve and plan under the same conditions– Every decision you make must be carefully considered. Learn to think three moves ahead to outsmart your opponent!
Three Good Manuals
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The quick start is only 25 pages and is an easy read. Duh, it’s a quick start. But as far as quick starts go, it’s pretty well done. It’s got all you need to get going. I would describe it as akin to the quick start walk-throughs of WDS wargames, but more meat to the bone, it’s more mini-manual-esque. The full Game Manual is about 120 pages. And it is well worth reading in its entirety. It’s a pretty quick read. An hour’s worth of time roughly can get you through the most of it. It’s definitely worth reviewing as it has some good tips and hints to lesser visible features in the UI.
Here is a quick look at the contents of the full Game Manual. This will give you a good idea of the functionality available in the game.
Scenario List
Campaign List
Scenario Editor
I’ve not had a lot of time to play with the scenario editor but it looks simple to use and has a good amount of features. My assumption is that this was the editor they used to make the in-game scenarios, nothing held back. This is always nice to see a developer feeling safe to provide their editors as-is. I do not know if they additionally have a WorkShop or not. (checking)
Campaign Editor
The campaign editor is pretty easy to use from what I can tell in a cursory look. You set up its descriptions on the first tab. Set the spidering of the scenario flow in the second. Then you set up some campaign screen imagery on the third tab, voila, campaign created and ready to rock and roll. Many campaign systems are convoluted, this one is not. Seems pretty easy peasy and a little sleazy.
click images to enlarge
Mechanics & Gameplay
The game runs as a WEGO system, as the name suggests. There is a Setup phase, which is only an initial part of Turn 1. During Setup, you have a little leeway in the way of a deployment zone for your units. During the setup phase you are allowed to perform recon with air support. That button is available, the other two support types are not (yet). You re-organize a bit before you hit > Continue To Next Phase.
The next phase is Planning, when you, well, plan. You set all your movement profiles, set stacks of units in one of several available attack or defense stances. You then physically plot out your intended movement paths. One nice feature is that as you hover over any unit during this planning phase, you can easily see the hex they came from by way of a nice color coded arrow. As you are ready to rock and roll, you again hit > Continue To Next Phase.
We move on finally to the Execution Phase. This is what I like to call the VCR phase. This is a depiction of how the wargame engine has determined the plan will play out for both sides. It is very easy to start and stop, and to fast forward or reverse as needed. Once you are done watching how things went down. You could hit on the Open Battle Summary button and you’ll see a nice graphical listing of all of the attacks that had occurred during the turn, with the type of attack clearly visible, as well as the overall odds that had been involved. If you click on a particular battle, you see a summary of that battle, the odds again and a breakdown of what influenced those odds. Pretty simple, but nicely detailed throughout.
Below screenshot shows a Polikarpov U-2 being used during the Setup phase to recon ahead of Planning for Turn 1 for the Soviets.
Below is a nice aspect of the game. You have air, naval and support assets available at varying levels and of differing types per scenario per historical situation during German operations towards Stalingrad and the Volga.
As shown below, you have several attack stances, and several defence stances to choose from. You also have basic Move and Attack, Move and Defend, and Move by Road Movement general orders per unit.
The Order Of Battle functionality is nicely laid out. Similar to the prior WEGO : Desert War, but improved graphics throughout. The maps in particular have much more defined and refined graphics.
A few more sample interface shots are below.
Evaluation
I think the game handles reinforcements well. It shows a nice listing of them very clearly. You can tell easily what is becoming available during the current turn, and have a nice visual of what is in store. You also can see if any command and control type assets are unlocked in an upcoming turn. The planning phase is pretty easy to work on. You can readily set the stance of a whole stack by using a couple swift hot-key combinations. Easy peasy. Everything about this game screams practical. The move and stance system is also intuitive. The air, naval and support assets are handled rather well. There is just enough detail without it bogging down your decision making at this mostly regimental level of decisions. The AI Assist mechanisms for auto generating ground and artillery attacks, is spot on. I wish it was slightly more intuitive to “adjust” the automatic suggestions, but I can live with undoing and redoing individual targeting as needed.
Logistics are not just an afterthought. I like the concept of basic supply vs move+ or combat+ supply levels. There are a reasonable amount of choices around the use of the limited supply of the latter two types throughout your play of the game. The line of communications are well represented throughout the game. You have good control of HQ relationships as well. You can shift commands in a pinch if desired. That is a unique feature to this wargame. Some games do not allow for this.
One thing I found occurring in parts of the game is that you’d click on something and see good information appear in the right hand side-bar, but as you move off the counter, it would disappear. So it was difficult (at times) to see information about what certain stats mean. This only occurs in certain combinations of clicking. When you directly click on the unit counter, and use the [i] hotkey to see its information, that data is fine. It’s more around some of the terrain effect parameters. I think this is something that could be easily remedied in a future patch, if enough folks feel similar as players.
The level of complexity is low to low-medium. Maybe about 3 out of 10? Leaning to 4. And honestly, it keeps itself to low complexity mostly throughout.The slightly higher nudge is just in the level of detail throughout. Most things are easy to get at, some details are multiple clicks to get at them. Overall, no surprises as far as missing hot-keys. The visual hot-key mechanism in the right hand panel is really neat. That is something I’ve seen lightly in other games, but it executes upon it well, with good textual hints as to what each hotkey button does. I like this approach as you end up able to memorize the keystrokes of your most commonly used functions. I think it’s a very approachable wargame that will just take time to master.
The inclusion of the map/scenario editor, and the campaign editor bring this game over the fence to awesome town. The fact that it additionally supports hotseat and Slitherine/Matrix based pbem++ multiplayer action is icing on the cake. In my Part I video under Bonus Material I state this, and I agree with myself whole-heartedly, even if WEGO : Stalingrad didn’t have the WEGO mechanics, it still would be a solid wargame, well worth its price. The fact that it additionally provides that unique experience of two plans merging from what I can tell thus far relatively realistically, hey, is a Bonus.
Wrap It Up!
The best compliment I can give this game is, I will play it. I know that’s asking a lot isn’t it?: Is the wargame eminently playable? I give WEGO: Stalingrad a thumbs up for this metric. I am not as into strategic level wargames as other scales. What I like about this game in particular is it took the good aspects of War In The East 1 & 2 by Grigsby, pulled the scale down an echelon or two, and then provided more variable movement and attack posturing. Also, there are some decent command and control options that are not available at the scale of WitE series and voila, a very playable wargame. All this, and they sprinkle in some AI auto management improvements over the original WEGO: Desert War , and mix it all together, bake it for a while, and you have a cake of a wargame, ready to eat. WEGO: Stalingrad is fun to play, has good detail given its scope/scale, and some surprise features throughout which we’ll dig into later.
Gallery Of Shots
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more media & galleries coming soon
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