Over The Top: WWI Review – Four Devs Built What AAA Won't

You know what's been driving me crazy for years? The fact that one of the most fascinating, terrifying, and visually distinct conflicts in human history has been almost completely ignored by the AAA shooter space. World War I. Trenches, mud, chaos, no man's land, bayonet charges into machine gun fire. Battlefield 1 came out in 2016 and basically nothing since then has tried to fill that void at scale. That was almost a decade ago.

And now, in 2026, a four-person indie studio from the Netherlands just dropped a 200-player WW1 sandbox shooter with fully destructible environments, a campaign mode, eight classes per faction, tanks, planes, trench digging, a map editor, and you can slap people with a baguette.

I'm not kidding. And it costs less than twenty bucks.

This is Over The Top: WWI, developed by Flying Squirrel Entertainment, and it might be the most ambitious indie shooter I've seen in years. Let me walk you through why this game deserves your attention.

Who Are Flying Squirrel Entertainment?

Before we get into the game itself, you need to understand who built this thing. Because it makes everything about it that much more impressive.

Flying Squirrel Entertainment is a tiny team. Four full-time developers. That's it. These guys got their start as modders for Mount & Blade: Warband, where they created the Napoleonic Wars DLC. That mod was a massive hit, moving over 300,000 copies and becoming one of the most beloved multiplayer experiences in the Mount & Blade community. They followed it up with Battle Cry of Freedom, an American Civil War sandbox shooter that supported up to 500 players per server and launched in 2022.

And here's the thing. These developers aren't just gamers. They're actual historical reenactors. They participate in living history events across Europe. That passion for authenticity bleeds through every inch of Over The Top. The uniforms, the weapons, the maps inspired by real Western Front locations. This isn't a team chasing trends or analyzing market research. They're making the game they want to play. And honestly? That's the difference.

Four guys with a passion project and a Mount & Blade modding background just shipped a game with more features than some $70 AAA releases. That's crazy to me.

What You're Actually Getting for $19

Let me break down what Over The Top: WWI actually offers, because the feature list is kind of absurd for a game at this price point.

Massive Scale Battles

200 players. 100 versus 100. On a single, fully destructible battlefield. Explosions tear craters into the landscape. Trenches get dug in real time. Buildings collapse. The terrain you're fighting over at the start of a match looks nothing like the terrain you're fighting over twenty minutes later. The front line literally reshapes itself as the battle unfolds.

If that sounds like the Battlefield experience you've been chasing, that's because it is. Except it's being delivered by four people, not a studio of hundreds burning through hundreds of millions of dollars.

Three Factions, Eight Classes Each

You can play as France, Britain, or Germany. Each faction has eight distinct classes. Rifleman, engineer, sniper, officer, flamethrower specialist, heavy gunner, and more. Each class has a clear role on the battlefield and enough room for improvisation that no two matches feel the same. The officer can call in airstrikes. The engineer can build fortifications. The flamethrower guy can clear entire trench lines. And everyone can grab a shovel and start digging.

A Ridiculous Arsenal

Over 50 unique weapons. Ten different types of armored vehicles and tanks. Airplanes. Machine guns. Mortars. Cannons. Artillery you can call in from across the map. And then the absurd stuff. Baguettes as melee weapons. Bagpipes that boost morale. You can pile ten players into a single tank and roll across the battlefield together. The game knows exactly what it is. It's a sandbox of organized chaos with just enough historical authenticity to sell the atmosphere and just enough silliness to keep things fun.

Is it fun? Is it cool? Yes and yes. And it's not even close.

Single-Player That Actually Exists

Here's where it really gets me. Over The Top has two dedicated single-player modes. "Instant Battle" lets you jump into large-scale battles with up to 200 bots. "Build a Battle" lets you customize your own scenarios by placing soldiers, cannons, machine guns, and tanks on each side and then watching the mayhem unfold. There's a proper campaign experience here that most multiplayer-first shooters don't even bother with.

Credit where credit's due. Most indie multiplayer shooters launch with online-only modes and hope for the best. These guys shipped with a full single-player offering on day one.

Map Editor and Steam Workshop

Twelve handcrafted maps at launch, all inspired by real Western Front battlefields. Dynamic weather. Seasonal changes. Spring mud, autumn fog, winter snow. Each season actually changes how the map plays.

On top of that, there's a full map editor that lets players create and share custom maps through Steam Workshop. That's the kind of long-tail content support that keeps games alive for years. Community-driven content creation. No battle passes required.

Where It Gets Rough

Look, I'll be honest with you. This is not a flawless game. Four developers building something this ambitious means there are going to be rough edges, and Over The Top has them.

The animations can be clunky. Character movement doesn't always feel as fluid as you'd want, especially coming from more polished shooters. There's a stiffness to some of the third-person animations that takes a little getting used to. It's not game-breaking, but it's noticeable.

And my biggest personal wish? A dedicated first-person mode. The game does have a first-person option, but it's clearly built around the third-person perspective first. A fully fleshed out first-person experience would take this game to another level. You're in the trenches, shells are landing around you, guys are charging over the top. That's begging for a visceral first-person camera. I hope Flying Squirrel gives this some love in post-launch updates.

Performance is also something to keep an eye on. With 200 players on a fully destructible map with dynamic weather and physics-based terrain deformation, things can get demanding. The team acknowledged during playtests that maintaining smooth FPS with this much chaos happening at once is an ongoing challenge. But they've been running public playtests since 2024, pulling in over 17,000 unique players during one test alone, and iterating based on community feedback the entire time. That's how you build a game.

The Bigger Picture

And this is where I zoom out, because Over The Top is about more than just one game.

This is a four-person team, selling a game for $19, with no battle pass, no seasonal FOMO content, no always-online requirement, no $30 cosmetic bundles, and no live-service roadmap designed to extract your wallet over the next three years. It ships with a campaign, a map editor, Steam Workshop support, community servers, and 200-player multiplayer. On day one.

Meanwhile, we've watched AAA studios spend $200 million on live-service shooters that can't maintain a player base for three months. We've watched massive publishers shut down games within a year of launch because the monetization model didn't pan out. We've watched studios with thousands of employees ship products with less content than what four guys from the Netherlands just put together.

That tells you everything you need to know about where the industry is right now.

The pendulum is swinging. It's been swinging for a while now. And Over The Top: WWI is one more example of what happens when developers ask two simple questions. Is it fun? Is it cool? When those are your guiding principles instead of quarterly earnings reports and investor presentations, you end up making something that people actually want to play.

Should You Buy It?

If you've been missing the large-scale Battlefield experience. If you're tired of live-service shooters that treat your time and money with contempt. If you want a sandbox shooter that respects the genre's roots while doing something genuinely creative with its setting. Yeah. Pick this one up.

It's $19.14 at full price. There's a 15% launch discount bringing it down to $16.27. For what you're getting, that's a steal. (offer ends Mar 13th)

Is it rough around the edges? Sure. Is every animation buttery smooth? No. But is it fun? Absolutely. Is it packed with content? More than it has any right to be. And is it made by people who clearly love what they're building? Without question.

Over The Top: WWI is available right now on Steam. Go support the kind of development that actually puts players first. Because these guys earned it.

Steam Link