1990 New Deal Productions
Platforms: Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, PC
The Few was a wargame that aimed to faithfully recreate the Battle of Britain in its entirety. It could be played solo or with a second player, either via Minitel, a serial cable connecting an Atari ST, Amiga, or PC, or on the same computer in a local two-player mode.
In two-player mode, one player controls the British forces while the other commands the Germans. In single-player mode, you take full control of the British forces against the AI. At the start of the game, you were to choose between two modes: Historical, which allows you to experience the entire Battle of Britain from beginning to end, or Standard, where the battle is divided into three distinct phases.
The Few aimed to offer a rich set of options while remaining highly accessible and was entirely controlled with the mouse, using an intuitive icon-based interface suited to its wargame mechanics. At any time, you were able to access various statistics about your own forces or the enemy’s. However, enemy intelligence is deliberately inaccurate by up to 20%, reflecting the real-world fog of war.
The game also simulates weather conditions, which play a crucial tactical role – cloudy skies make air attacks riskier and less frequent. The status of airfields and radar installations is also factored in: if more than 50% of an installation is damaged, it becomes non-operational.
Combat isn’t solely determined by numerical strength—other strategic factors influence the outcome of battles. Once the game begins, everything unfolds in real time, with each in-game day representing roughly two hours of play.
Unfortunately after a few previews in various magazines of the time, including Generation 4, the game disappeared without a trace. It seems it never got a release on any platform at all. What happened to it, and could anything of it still survive today?
With thanks to Hoagie / Abandonware France for highlighting and for scans.
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