By Joseph Luster

Beloved sim publisher Microprose Software is back with another potential hit in the upcoming Task Force Admiral – Vol. 1: American Carrier Battles. As the title suggests, this one has players commanding a World War II carrier group, all within the tumultuous battles of the Pacific theatre in 1942. 

Developer Drydock Dreams Games took a healthy dose of inspiration from Microprose’s own Carrier Command, and as such Task Force Admiral is gearing up to deliver a solid challenge with multiple ways to take on and view the tasks at hand. You can soak in an overview of the action from a top-down perspective or switch to a full 3D view for a closer look at how each unit within your carrier group is falling into place. Protecting your carrier is a top priority, so you’ll need to make sure you never leave it exposed for too long, lest the enemy get a bead on you and end your mission prematurely.

Task Force Admiral features true-to-history battles as you fight through the Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, and more. The full game promises somewhere between 30 and 40 single scenarios along with a quick scenario generator and a full scenario builder. The majority of the game will be single player for starters, but player-versus-enemy and player-versus-player multiplayer modes are planned for future volumes. 

At the time of this writing, Drydock Dreams Games has set a nebulous yet admirable release date of “When it’s done (and by that we mean well done).” It’s very clear that the team behind Task Force Admiral is full of fans who have a deep love for the real-time-strategy and sim genres. As they say on their official website, they waited for years, decades even, for games to come by that could sit next to the greats—like Carriers at War, Great Naval Battles, Task Force 1942, and Fighting Steel—in their hearts. Passionate hearts can only wait for so long, though, so eventually they decided to take on the task and get the job done themselves. I can’t say for certain that we’ll see how it all pays off soon, but we’ll definitely see it when the final game is ready.

Publisher: Microprose Software
Genre: Strategy
System: PC
Available: TBD

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