by: Robert Zacny

As the Arctic ice cap retreats and leaves larger stretches of navigable ocean behind it, new trade lanes and resources will tempt the world's military and economic powers. In 2030, following years of competition and the relative decline of the United States Navy, and the breakdown of the trans-Atlantic alliance and the European Union, war breaks out at sea between Russia, competing European alliances, and the United States. It is a clash between very different navies built to fight using radically different doctrines.

Naval War: Arctic Circle uses this premise to setup a balanced modern naval wargame in the tradition of Larry Bond's Harpoon and Jane's Fleet Command without resorting to the "Cold War turns hot" chestnut of most speculative wargames set in the modern era. First-time developer Turbo Tape Games has made a survey of modern navies and attempted to create a plausible scenario in which the US Navy is no longer supreme, and NATO no longer holds Europe's navies together. Whether or not this is an entirely credible future is beside the point. The main idea is to have a free-for-all on the high seas for navy enthusiasts to enjoy.

Turbo Tape has tried to walk the line between being realistic and providing diverse, interesting gameplay. So in Naval War, the Russian navy is characterized by its reliance on land-based airpower, submarines, and a multi-purpose, heavily armored surface fleet. They don't have the carriers and missile cruisers that the United States boasts, but they can try to negate those advantages by trusting in their point-defense weapons (guns that can shoot-down incoming missiles) and area-denial weapons like subs and aircraft that can make large swaths of ocean uninhabitable for enemies.