Tank Mechanic Simulator is the perfect choice for what I like to call a “Friday Night” game. It’s the kind of game you can fire up while enjoying a good podcast and leisurely spend the evening polishing glacis, tracking down obscure parts, and carefully adding callsigns, all without a care in the world.

On the other hand, Tank Squad is what I’d categorize as a “Saturday Night” kind of title. It’s the game that compels you to cast aside your cozy blankets and your cat, which is likely purring contently on your lap. Your crew awaits you, Oberleutnant, and they rely on your leadership both on the battlefield and in the workshop.

Robert, take the lead.

My name is Robert, and I am the CEO of DeGenerals. We’re from Poland. Me and my friend Michał founded the company in 2017 to develop Tank Mechanic Simulator under PlayWay supervision/publishing. Me and Michał are both fans of military history and WW2 so the idea of the company was to make games about tanks and combat, but the first game was especially different to match the theme of our publisher, because back in 2017 they were very unlikely to publish games with any violence.

Have you worked in any previous titles? Or was Tank Mechanic Simulator your first title?

Me and Michał met at FragOut Studios, where we worked on a few titles- like Firebound (unreleased RTS), Sniper Tactical (release on mobile platform), Ship Special 2017 (sim game for PlayWay)- started in 2013 and finished in 2016.

Tank Mechanic Simulator is a very interesting (and an out of the box) idea. Where did it come from?

It was a conclusion of our discussions with PlayWay. In 2017 PlayWay released their big title Car Mechanic Simulator and they tried to enhance the success by creating new teams with a focus on their interest. Our was military and here we are.

Doing a tank mechanic simulator must be hard since there are no other games to emulate from. What games inspired you?

This is incorrect as there are plenty of other games similar here with mechanic sim as their base. First off is Car Mechanic, later came out Motorcycle Mechanic, Space Mechanic, and so many others. Our approach was to base the whole process on taking care of your museum and, in this process, restoring tanks through contracts. The development took 3 years and the game was released on 20th February 2020.

How was the community’s reception to the title?

The first few days were very, very hard as players ran into very big issues even launching the game. But in the following months, we patched the game heavily and finally, we reached some kind of point of stability. From what players tell us they treat the game as relaxing, to get the stress off because it doesn’t really ask from them any high action-packed moments or imposes some sort of time limits.

Now, let’s shift gears towards your up-and-coming Tank Squad. How do you describe it?

As a mix of games, I liked to play and still play:

1. Graviteam Tactics – Ideal for combat simulation of combined arms and scale of the battle;
2. Combat Mission – Ideal for controlling who does what during combat;
3. War Thunder – Simplified control scheme and the same ballistics (with correct penetration values and ballistics after penetration);
4. Brothers In Arms – Simplified squad control;
5. Tank Mech – with the repair section and logistics management.

All of this plus coop is a hell of a project. Enough to make have white hair at only 32.

You’re following in the footsteps of Tank Mechanic Simulator and importing some aspects of the game. What are those?

Mostly how the vehicles are constructed in Unity Engine, but already learning from our previous mistakes and changing to the needs of this game. One example is how we handle physics and optimization, in the Tank Mechanic Simulator this wasn’t a big issue to have highly simulated physics at all times for the vehicle suspension.

In Tank Squad sometimes you have 20 to 30 tanks at the same time and the game would explode if we didn’t change some approaches and create systems to manage this. Also, how we handle the interactions and overall approach of informing the player about vehicle status and possible repair/rearm/refuel through User Interface is heavily influenced by experiences from Tank Mechanic Simulator.

What would you say makes Tank Squad special?

At this point? I would not say it. We would like to create our own tank game with big-scale battles and logistics but I cannot treat this as something special – I love what I am doing and that’s special for me, if players like what I love to do then life is fantastic!

You said that Tank Squad gets its inspiration from Graviteam Tactics, Company of Heroes, Post Scriptum and Panzer Elite. How is that so?

I would begin by highlighting the way we approach combat. I would like the game to be a realistic depiction of the combined warfare of WW2 and a serious representation of combat.

One of my favourite games is Red Orchestra 2 (and 1 but that’s ancient history by now) and this is a big inspiration from a thematic point of view. Company Of Heroes – probably more in future, as now the command-giving system is simply not finished, but I would like to create some simple game mode, even in PVP, to allow both sides of a mission to capture vital points of the map and use a pool of resources to spawn defences or bases to conquer the rest of the map.

Another one is Post Scriptum. The sound design, animations, and vehicular combat. There’s a lot of awesome stuff that gave us a lot of inspiration on how to approach various problems with control schemes from the first-person perspective.

Panzer Elite – this is more a suggestion from the community that our game looks and feels like Panzer Elite and feels like it – I never actually played it, but looking at gameplays it really resembles what we want to do here, so maybe in future I’ll find time to playthrough the game.

I think it’s better to say that I am a World War 2 strategy game player, and this screenshot will explain what I mean:

Every game developer I interview has to face the gauntlet and answer this question: you’re only allowed to pick 5 games to play forever. What games would you choose and why?

• Men Of War – The sheer amount of mods would be enough to keep me entertained for a few years;
• Total War – The same thing, especially Warhammer and Rome 2;
• Arma 3 – Modding can make this game to anything you like;
• Mount & Blade: Bannerlord – Same thing again;
• Heroes of Might and Magic III – Yep, it is time to reinstall.

Any message for fans of the game or people on the fence about buying it?

Don’t preorder, read reviews and look at gameplays, try the demo, be an aware customer and be happy with your choices, remember about the refund system. Keep track of what we do by observing our dev statuses and if the path we’ve chosen is for you.

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