The Gunner's Handbook

A cozy artillery game. You command Old Marta, a railway gun far behind the lines, and see the war only through recon on a watercolour map table.

Short answers to what people ask first about Shellfall: what kind of game it is, how gentle it is, how long it lasts and what comes later.

The railway gun you command. Twenty years in a museum depot, now back on the rails with a tank engine called Pudding, a small crew and a cat.

Spot, solve, set, load, fire, watch, correct. The minute or so that the whole game is built around.

Shells fly a real path through gravity, drag and wind. You never see the formula; you read it from a booklet, a ruler, a weather board and a spotter's voice.

One to four powder bags decide how far Old Marta reaches. More bags reach deeper, but every extra kilometre costs time, accuracy and cover.

Six shells, each with its own job. Two of them do damage; the other four hide, light, stun or feed.

Every shot gives Old Marta away a little. Read the warnings, limber up and move before their guns find her.

You only know what recon has seen. Unknown ground is blank paper; recon paints it in, and old knowledge fades back to pale washes.

Five ways to see the front, each with its own reach and its own weakness: spotters, the balloon, recon planes, flash and sound ranging, and impact reports.

What recon has seen stays on the map, and what you destroyed stays destroyed, until fresh recon shows otherwise.

You never see their guns fire. Flash and sound ranging give you bearings; cross two or three and you have somewhere to aim.

The Hearthguard, the Rustcoats and the Mustard Company. Who they are, how they fight, and which of them you face from where Old Marta stands.

The war runs whether you fire or not. What the soldiers do, how a charge looks from above, and why sitting still costs you ground.

Three lines of zig-zag earthworks, how shells wear them down, and why an abandoned trench never quite disappears.

Your side only digs forward where you have made it safe. How a dig operation runs, from the officer's mark to the new fire trench.

Every trench is fed from a depot far behind it. Cut the chain, and the sector at the end of it weakens, stops digging and gives way.

Old Marta goes where the rails go. How the lines are laid out, how they follow the front, and why a junction is worth a shell.

Every shell leaves a mark, and the marks stay. Craters fill with rain, ruins stand, old trenches turn to grass, and the map becomes a record of the war.

A fictional lowland of farms, canals and walled cities, 64 × 48 km, where three armies fight one long war.

No separate fights, no menus between places, no waiting. Where Old Marta stands on the rails decides which part of the war is yours.

The stretch of front where most of the fighting is. Where it sits, how it drifts, and why you might report there.

The war runs 15 times faster than real time, so one war day passes in 96 real minutes. What follows the war clock, and what stays in your own time.

Four seasons, each with its own colours, and weather that changes what your spotters see and where your shells land.

Tilly, Fenn, Sergeant Abelard, Grete and Pip. The four people and one cat who keep Old Marta firing.

Story operations at named places, officer requests wherever the front is active, and what happens when a place falls while Old Marta is somewhere else.

Letters from villagers, soldiers and your family catch up with you at sidings and depots. Some ask for something. Keep the promise or miss it; the war goes on either way.

Four seasons of one continuous war, about 14 story operations reached in the order you choose, several endings, and Valley Mode when the story is done.

Shellfall is played from two places: high above the watercolour war, and down in the clay gun yard beside Old Marta. A short dive through the clouds joins them.

Mouse and keyboard, or a gamepad mapped to the same actions. Every control in the game on one page.

Pause anywhere, half speed, faction patterns, subtitles on every radio line, and a Gunner's assist that does the arithmetic for you.

After launch, every player's war feeds one shared front. You never fight another player directly, but what they do shapes the ground you fight on.

From a pinned target on the map table to a shell in the air. Read the bearing and range, look up the solution, lay Old Marta and pull the lanyard.

One long, one short, then split the difference. How to read a spotter's correction and walk your shells onto a target in two to four shots.

Read the exposure meter, know the warning signs, and get Old Marta to a new siding before the enemy's ranging shots find her.

An officer asks you to cover a dig. Silence what overlooks the strip, lay smoke, keep heads down with shrapnel, and hold until the new trench connects.

What is being made now, and the road from the first shot to launch and the shared war.

Why the war is a watercolour map and the gun is soft clay, the styles tried first, and the games and painters Shellfall learns from.

Shellfall runs on Hearth, a reusable engine layer on Unity 6. How it paints in watercolour, remembers everything that happened, and keeps one continuous world on a Steam Deck.