Review Fix Exclusive: Valentin Lievre Talks ‘Operation Citadel’

Review Fix chats with “Operation Citadel” developer Valentin Lievre, who discusses the WWII game and what makes it unique.

Review Fix: How was this game born ? 

Valentin Lievre: The really first war game I ever played was Memoir’44, my dad introduced us (my brothers and I) to the genre. It’s not hardcore wargaming, but it has tiles, units, and it’s turn based. But this was when I was way younger, and it was only in December 2019 that I stumbled across Panzer Corps 1. I played for days, I loved every aspect of it. I didn’t even finish the grand campaign, stopped somewhere in the middle, and downloaded back unity, and created the project. 

Review Fix: What is your role in the game ?

Lievre: Since it’s only my brother and I, and since my brother made all the UI and the tiles, I am responsible for everything else. “Marketing”, managing the social networks, coding, really, everything.

Review Fix: What has development been like ?

Lievre: The game has had many major updates, not just graphically, but also with the code and the optimization. I won’t got in all the details, because if you want to see the whole game’s history you can have a look at the old posts on instagram, absolutely everything is there since the very beginning, but I will quote some: complete tile revamp, realized by my brother. Unit’s movement update, that added pathfinding, because in the early versions of OC, you could only move 1 tile after another, and you couldn’t click far away and have your unit move there. Those two are only small things that contributed to make the game be what it is today.

Review Fix: What makes this game special ?

Lievre: Honestly, it works fundamentally as any other wwII war game out there, but I tried to pick the best from each : supply mechanics, ranking for units etc

And added what I felt could be nice to have such as unit’s customization, adding rockets or bombs or a drop tank to your plane for example, or placing mines with your engineers or destroyers at sea. But also the size of the maps, on most games you have really small maps, and that’s it. I did both, small maps for the campaigns, and huge maps representing an entire theatre for a “quick game” experience. Quick game here means more like not a campaign, because it actually takes way more time to play. And also, the crossplatform multiplayer ! I travel a lot, and don’t always have the possibility to play on my PC. So being able to continue your online games from your mobile device really is something neat. Multiplayer even has a leaderboard, so you can know who’s the best at the game !

Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most ?

Lievre: As I wrote earlier, panzer corps 1 did, since it pretty much is the only WWII wargame I played on PC. I loved everything there, but I felt too limited, restricted. So I made mine.

Review Fix: Any fun stories or wild moments during development ?

Lievre: Developing the AI probably was the funniest of all things ! Seeing it act dumb, and fine tuning all that.

Review Fix: What were the major lessons learned ?

Lievre: Anyone who wants, can. I did this on my own, with my brother’s help, and we had no knowledge of anything. But we wanted it. So we did it. 

Review Fix: What’s your favourite memory as a gamer ? 

Lievre: I used to play a LOT of monster hunter freedom unit during my teenage years. Got a save which had roughly 300h of gameplay, and my younger brother Colin dropped the PSP, not even from a really high place, but this created a serious issue with the saves, and I lost everything. 300h of my life gone in an instant. Thank you Colin.

Review Fix: How have your previous experiences in the industry helped this game ?

Lievre: First experience, so it didn’t. 

Review Fix: How do you want this game to be ultimately remembered ?

Lievre: I think I want people to remember it as a labour of love, because it truly is, I spent over 1500h just coding and testing, during my free time in under a year. This game really is like my baby. So, I want people to see it as a homemade product, which involved the community a lot more than anything else. Because this game would definitely not be what it is without the amazing community it has.

Review Fix: What’s next ? 

Lievre: Uh ! Such a hard question ! Honestly ? I don’t know ! I love RPGs, and I love DnD (Dungeon and Dragons). We always wanted to make a very rich game with my brother with unique custom handmade quests, like a computerized solo DnD game. So, we might get back to that idea, maybe … ?

Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add ?

Lievre: Thank you so much to the amazing people that helped me through the development of this game. If I had only done what I initially planned for it, the game would have been finished a long time ago. But implementing people’s ideas, suggestions into the game truly made it what it is today. It is I started it, the community continued it, and finished it.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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