It seems that 2021 is going to be an excellent year for the strategy genre, with the excellent Wargame: Red Dragon being given out by Epic until next week. Now, on the topic at hand: Digitalmindsoft has kept Gates of Hell as POW for the last half a decade, since the game was originally announced.

Radio silence has since come to an end and by the end of February an open beta was announced with players able to request a key, in a first come, first serve basis. Thinking I was late for the party it surprised me to get instant access. I’m assuming the developers were expecting a lot more noice to generate around it, but when you go missing for so long you can’t really blame people for forgetting about it, with so good games coming out since Gates of Hell was announced way back when.

Unfortunately I can’t say GoH blew my mind. In fact, I found it to be as flat as those post-world war II soviet tank experiments, with the game not able to shake the feeling that it is just a really good “Men of War” mod. Maybe I’m just burned out after playing so many variations of those.

Free is still free so give it a try and claim your key here, you might enjoy it.