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.