1944: Son Bridge

Sunday 17 September 1944, 13:19. Operation Market Garden begins. Hundreds of C-47s cross the Dutch fields and the 506th Parachute Infantry of the 101st Airborne jump onto the heath north-west of the village of Son.

Their job is the bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal, a few kilometres south. Between them and it are the Son woods, a village of brick houses and garden walls, and an 88 mm Flak gun dug in beside the school, covering the main street.

You lead one platoon of the 506th: 37 men, two rifle squads, a 60 mm mortar squad and the platoon headquarters. The platoon and its men are made up. The battle, the ground and the 88 are real.

This is not a base-building RTS. There are no waves to farm and no reinforcements on a timer. You have the men you jumped with. Lose them and they are gone.

• Command squads, not sprites. Each squad has a leader, and your orders pass down by voice. A squad leader can fix the enemy with his machine gun while his riflemen go round the flank.
• Cover is about direction. A garden wall protects you from the front, not the side. Flank a position and its cover stops working.
• Fire keeps heads down. Machine-gun fire suppresses and pins men. Lay down covering fire, throw smoke that drifts with the wind, and move only when the enemy's heads are down.
• Houses are fought room by room. Men stack up on a wall, a grenade goes in through the window, then they clear the house one room at a time.
• The wounded matter. Medics run to wounded men, patch them up and drag them to cover. A man left in the open bleeds out.
• What they can see is what you can see. Hedges, houses and woods block the view, and men lean round corners to look.
• A pause that still takes orders. Press Space to stop the battle, think, give orders, then let it run.

• Left-click / drag: select men (a click picks his squad, a double-click picks him alone)
• Right-click: move. Right-drag sets which way they face and how spread out they stand
• Hold right-click, or Q: the order wheel (Move fast, Assault, Suppress, Smoke, Get down, Fall back, Hold, Careful)
• Space: tactical pause. Orders still work
• C then click: suppressing fire on a hedge, window or treeline
• G: smoke, Z: get down, Shift + drag: draw a route
• Tab: the battle map. Alt: show all your men. Mouse wheel: zoom

The demo is the whole Son Bridge mission: four chapters, from the jump on the heath to the end of the day at the canal. Allow about one to two hours.

It starts on the heath: gather the scattered platoon and deal with the machine-gun post at the edge of the woods. Then it’s into Son itself, under the windows of German-held houses, with the 88 waiting by the school. What happens after that, you’ll find out.

Historically, a point platoon crept within about 50 yards of that 88 and knocked it out with one bazooka round. See if you can do as well.

Updated 31 October 2026: all four chapters, a 3D mortar crew, an objective marker, easier squad selection and smoother movement. See the devlog for the full patch notes.

To run it: unzip, then start WW2SonDemo.exe (keep the .pck file in the same folder). The game isn't signed, so Windows may say "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway.

1. Right-click the zip and choose Extract All..., then pick a folder such as your Desktop. Don’t run the game from inside the zip: it needs all of its files.
2. Open the new WW2SonDemo folder. You’ll see four files: WW2SonDemo.exe (the game), WW2SonDemo.pck (all the game’s data), ww2core.windows.template_release.x86_64.dll (part of the game) and README.txt. Keep them all together in the same folder.

This is an early demo from a one-person project, and honest feedback is what it's for. Please leave a comment, or answer any of these:

1. Was there a moment you didn't know what to do, or why something happened? When?
2. Did your men ever do something you didn't order, or not do what you ordered?
3. What was the best moment?
4. How did it run (smooth, sometimes jerky, or slow)? What graphics card do you have?
5. Would you play more of it? Why, or why not?

Thank you very much for taking the time to play this demo, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.