The living battlefield

The war beyond the horizon runs in real time, whether you fire or not. Soldiers man the fire steps, grenades pop, enemy guns shell your line and their infantry waits for a gap. If you do nothing, the enemy's artillery wears your trenches down, their infantry charges, and your front falls back. Your job is to break their supply and their trenches so your own side can push forward.

Seen from far above

Soldiers have real human proportions, about 1.8 m tall, and you only ever see them from high above. At the default zoom they are 3 to 8 px tall: small dark figures moving in squads of 4 to 8. There are no close-up characters on the battlefield. You see soldiers only where recon is live and in your own trenches; on last-known ground the trenches stand empty. See Fog of war.

• They man the fire steps and shoot across no-man's-land with small muzzle flashes and tracer-like puffs.
• Squads within about 30 m of an enemy trench throw grenades. Each one makes a small pop, a dust ring and a tiny crater mark.
• Machine-gun nests sit at trench corners and pin down advances. They are high-value targets.

Gentle by design

Violence in Shellfall stays gentle. A soldier who is hit tumbles over and fades into a puff of grey smoke, like a toy soldier. There is no blood, and no bodies are left behind. Wounded figures limp back to a field tent. Explosions are cream smoke rings with a peach core.

Charges

An army charges a sector when its strength there is clearly higher than the defender's: about 1.5 times, after supply and morale are counted. Under live recon a charge is a moment to watch. A whistle blows, soldiers climb out and run across no-man's-land through the wire. Under fog your own trenches report it by radio, and it appears on the map as an arrow.

If enough soldiers reach the enemy trench, it changes hands. You can stop an enemy charge with shrapnel or HE in no-man's-land. You can help your own side's charge by shelling the defenders first. See Shells and Trenches.

Doing nothing has a cost

The war does not wait for you. Enemy barrages and charges keep coming whether Old Marta fires or not. The line you must never lose is your reserve line, the last trench before your gun's hill.

A few numbers underneath

Shellfall does not simulate every bullet. Each sector of trench, about 40 to 60 m long, has four numbers: strength, supply, morale and fortification. Fire between facing sectors wears those numbers down, and the soldiers act out the result. The muzzle flashes, grenades and casualties you see match the numbers, but they do not drive them.

That is what your shells really change. HE knocks down fortification, and cutting the chain behind a sector drains its supply until it fires less and gives way. The front status bar at the top of both views shows the supply and strength of each sector in reach. See Supply and The intel map remembers.

While you are away, the war carries on here too, in less detail. See One continuous war.