hearts-of-iron-ii posts

Paradox Interactive has been very supportive of mod and mod teams for its various games in the past. Today the publisher announced that two projects created by mod developers of their WWII strategy game Hearts of Iron II will be released by Paradox as full commercial games.

One project is called Darkest Hour, a stand alone game that has a number of short missions set during the first half of the 20th century. It also has a new AI system. The other game is titled Iron Cross and is actually an expansion pack to Hearts of Iron II which adds over 6,000 new events and over 4,000 new provinces in a title that spans between 1933 and 1964. Both titles will be released via digital download in the fourth quarter of 2010 or the first quarter of 2011.

Publisher Paradox Interactive has a ton of games due for release in the next 12 months and today they posted word that one of them has "gone gold." Arsenal of Democracy, a WWII strategy game based on the Hearts of Iron II engine, is now completed and will be released via digital download services on February 23.

The game was developed by BL-Logic, a group of creators that previously had worked on modifying Hearts of Iron II. This new stand alone game has their take on the WWII strategy game genre with Paradox saying it will allow players to rewrite history by taking on any nation involved in World War II. The game is priced at $19.95.

A few weeks ago, Paradox Interactive announced it was planning to release For The Glory, a game created by a team of mod makers using Europa Universalis II. Today they have announced a similar project made by mod makers based on another of their strategy games, the WWII themed Hearts of Iron II.

Arsenal of Democracy, due for release in December, is described as "Hearts of Iron II on steroids" and will have lots of new and improved features including support for higher resolutions, a revamped combat system, improved AI and more. The team at developer BL-Logic claims their work will be "the ultimate World War II simulation." Big words. We will see if they are right in a few months.